


Dovetail

by leoandsnake



Series: Jack dated Tony verse [6]
Category: 24 (TV)
Genre: 'Tony didn't go evil' fic, Alcohol Abuse, Anal Sex, Arguments, Awkward confrontations, Blowjobs, Canon Divergent, Cuddling, FBI, Fix-it fic, Gun Violence, M/M, Nightmares, Political Intrigue, Porn With Plot, Rimming, Road Trip, Rough Sex, cliche Siken quote, discussion of death and dead spouses, discussions of trauma, lengthy but satisfying plot resolutions, plot heavy, post-day 8, re-established relationship, relationship difficulties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 01:00:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 49,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4501740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoandsnake/pseuds/leoandsnake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of day 8, Jack is sure he has no one left to turn to. He gets a last minute reprieve in the form of old friend Tony Almeida. Together they go on the run, entering into a battle of wits with the Russian government in the process. At the same time, Jack and Tony's decade-old infatuation resurfaces. (Canon divergent - in this universe, Tony did not turn at the end of day 7, and remained in Larry Moss's custody until release.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> How weird it is to finally be done with this! I started it in 2012 after finishing season 8 and being annoyed with the lack of resolution (this was before day 9 aired, obviously)

_“You just wanted to prove there was one safe place, just one safe place where you could love him. You have not found that place yet. You have not made that place yet. You are here. You are here. You're still right here.”_

\- Richard Siken

 

Jack only makes ten blocks before he has to crouch down in an alley and catch a second wind. Slow, shallow breaths. He reminds himself that he’s come back from worse, but it’s not too reassuring.

He’s planning his next move when his phone buzzes. Jack pulls it out in confusion. He meant to throw it away after hanging up with Chloe, but he put in his pocket out of habit.

 

907-880-3410: Im in front of the roosevelt

 

“What?” he says out loud.

 

212-779-9462: wrong number

 

He tosses the phone. It skids along the pavement and bounces off the wall. He’s willing himself to stand up when it buzzes again.

Jack reaches out for it, noticing that his fingers are bloody. He needs a dressing changed. On which wound - the first stab wound? The second stab wound? One of the gunshot wounds?

 

907-880-3410: No, jack

 

He squints.

 

212-779-9462: whos this?

907-880-3410: who do you think

907-880-3410: it’s Tony

 

Jack laughs without mirth. Of course.

 

907-880-3410: im double parked

907-880-3410: where are you

 

It takes him some time to respond, typing awkwardly with one hand and holding his side with the other.

 

212-779-9462: corner of 1st av x E 34th

907-880-3410: ill come to you

 

Jack leans against the wall, concealed by a stack of boxes on one side and a dumpster on the other, and lets himself relax for the first time in hours.

 

/

 

He hears Tony before he sees him. The dull rumble of an engine that cuts out sharply, two boots hitting the ground, and finally soft footsteps.

He opens his eyes and pushes himself to his feet.

Tony looks casual as he leans on the hood of a black SUV. He doesn’t turn as Jack walks over and gets into the passenger seat; in fact, he waits a full thirty seconds before getting back into the car. Jack counts it out on his watch.

“That’s your idea of covert?” he mutters.

Tony snorts. “Just keeping an eye out for cops. Open the glove compartment.”

He does. There’s sunglasses and a baseball cap.

Jack looks sidelong at Tony. He hasn’t changed too much. His hair is freshly buzzed like the last time they met. At some point, though, he lost the goatee.

Tony notices him looking. “What’s up, Jack,” he says as he pulls back into traffic. His voice is flat.

“Just wondering where you’ve been.”

“A kind of work release in Alaska. Working for a company that won a systems analytics contract.”

_Alaska?_

“What do you mean, _kind of_ work release? Were you ever even convicted of anything? Have you spent _any_ time in prison?”

Tony doesn’t take his eyes off the road. “No.”

Jack lets the silence sit for a while. He’s starting to think from where the pain is that the second stab one is the one that needs tending, but they need to be out of Manhattan before he even thinks about getting out of the car.

“Who called you?” he says, finally. “Chloe?”

“Yeah.”

There’s a beat.

“Actually... Ricker called me first. I wasn’t in New York until an hour ago.”

“He called you? When?” Jack demands.

They’re on the Brooklyn Bridge now. Traffic is heavy. Everyone’s fleeing the city. Tony’s hands slide to the bottom of the steering wheel, resting at 7 and 5. He leans back in his seat.

“Right after he suited you up. He said you were in some kind of trouble and you weren’t listening to him. I told him that if you called me, I’d come, otherwise it had nothing to do with me. Then I saw the APB. Terminate with extreme prejudice. I thought you’d need all the help you could get.” He clears his throat. “But I didn’t get here fast enough.”

“When did Chloe call you?”

“Four, four fifteen? She couldn’t talk for long, but she filled me in.”

Traffic rolls to a complete stop. Jack puts the sunglasses on, and after a moment, the hat too.

Tony looks at him. “Sorry about Renee.”

Jack isn’t sure how to respond. He nods curtly. “Yeah. Thanks.”

 

/

 

They’re heading upstate. Jack doesn’t ask where. Tony doesn’t seem to be in a talkative mood and to be honest, he isn’t either. All he wants to do is pass out, and he tries - rolls the seat back as far as it goes and gets as comfortable as he can, but he just winds up staring at the roof of the car, drifting in and out of various states of consciousness.

He sits up in time to see a sign fly by. Rest stop, two miles.

“Tony,” he says groggily.

Tony glances over at him. “Need to stop?”

He nods and reaches inside his jacket. Sticky blood has soaked through the makeshift bandage and is running down his ribcage. He must have torn his stitches, such that they were. Jason didn’t do a very good job. Not that he can blame him.

Tony gives his bloody hand a sharp look, then turns his attention back to the road. “What happened?”

He sounds worried, and a lot more like the guy Jack used to know.

Jack allows himself a small smile.

“I got stabbed. I had someone stitch it up, but then the ambulance was hit, and I got knocked around.” He winds his seat back up.

Tony chews the inside of his lip for a moment. "All right," he says as he takes the exit. “I’ll try to do something for you right now, but we need to get it looked at when we land.”

"Where are you taking me?"

"I'm not _taking_ you anywhere, Jack. Christ. I'm coming with you."

"Fine. Where are we going?"

They pull into the parking lot of a Mobil station.

“Wait here,” Tony says as he gets out.

Jack watches him like a hawk as he walks into the store and disappears behind a shelf.

He comes out a few minutes later with a bag, makes eye contact with Jack and jerks his thumb toward the side of the building, where the bathrooms are. Jack gets out gingerly and follows him, pulling the brim of his hat as low as it can go.

Tony leads him past the bathrooms and around the back.

"Up against the wall."

Jack complies. Tony kneels in front of him and pulls out a bottle of antibacterial spray. He unzips his jacket for him, tosses it on the ground and pauses.

"Lift your shirt," Tony says, softly.

Jack wants to ask why he doesn't do it himself, but he refrains. He lifts his shirt.

Tony peels back the bandage with careful hands.

"This’ll hurt."

Jack's teeth are already gritted.

Tony opens the neck of the bottle, pours antibacterial on his hands, then picks up a pair of heavy duty tweezers.

"Hack job," he mutters, looking at Jack's side.

"I had a gun on him while he was doing it," Jack says.

Tony snorts. "So he didn’t feel like making it pretty for you."

"Not exactly."

As they've been talking Tony has been snipping at the stitches, and in one fluid motion he grabs the knot and pulls.

Jack's side is on fire in an instant. He raises his arm to his mouth and buries it in the crook of his elbow so he doesn't make a sound.

Tony is working faster now, pouring antibacterial all over a piece of gauze and scrubbing the area - an even worse kind of pain. Jack bends over slightly, closing his eyes. His mouth is filling with spit.

"You're all right, you're all right," Tony hisses, throwing the bloody gauze on the ground and picking up a fresh square of it, which he presses to the wound. His hand feels cold against the hot, angry flesh, but it's nice. Tony's hands are nice. Small and sturdy. He always liked that about him.

Tony reaches for the tape, now, and starts layering the gauze. He's three squares deep before Jack pats him on the shoulder.

"That's enough."

Tony squares his jaw. "You're bleeding a lot."

“I’ll live.” _Probably._

Tony shakes his head. His hands are still resting against Jack’s hipbones, holding him against the wall. He stands up, and lets go as he does.

“Hey,” Jack says.

They lock eyes. Tony’s flash at him, warm in the light of early dusk. He glances down at Jack’s mouth for the briefest of moments and then he walks away, turning the corner, disappearing.

Jack follows.

 

/

 

When they’re back on the road Jack asks him again, “Where are we going?”

Tony doesn’t respond and he repeats the question, louder.

“I heard you.”

“Then answer me, damnit.”

“The less you know, the better. I cashed in a lot of favors to get you out of the country, Jack. Everyone involved wants plausible deniabi -”

“ _Where are we going_?”

He knows he can lean on Tony, he’s been doing it since they met. But never like this, when neither of them have anything to lose.

“Further upstate, to an airfield. Then to Bermuda.”

Jack reels.

“Bermuda?”

“I have connections there.”

“What connections? People involved with Emerson?”

No response.

“Tony -”

“When we’re over the ocean you can ask me any questions you want. For now, just trust me.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

It’s cruel, but it does the trick. Tony gives a huffy little exhale of exasperation.

“Jack, who’s had your ass all these years?”

“Chloe.”

Eye roll. “Who had your ass all the years before that?”

“A couple people.”

“Jack, come on.”

“Fine. You. But Tony, I thought you were dead for years. You _let_ me think that. Then I find out you’re a terrorist, then I find out you’re a double agent, then I find out you really _were_ a criminal for a while, then you do your job and disappear into a helicopter in handcuffs and I don’t see you again until now. And you promised me you’d own up to what you did and I find out Taylor didn’t send you to jail, she sent you to Alaska.”

Tony jerks the steering wheel and pulls over to the shoulder.

“If you think I should have gone to prison - gone _back_ to prison,” he snaps, “then you can get out of this car and walk back to Manhattan and hand yourself over to the Feds, Jack, all right? Because nothing I did in those years in Emerson’s crew even came close to what you pulled today.”

They sit in silence for a long moment.

“You could have called me,” Jack said. “Anytime. When you were with them. When you were in Alaska. Anytime. You didn’t. You could have found me.”

“You could have found _me_.”

“I didn’t think you wanted me to.”

“Yeah. Likewise,” Tony says, pulling back onto the road.

 

/

 

An hour or so later they pull off of the road and onto a small, unpaved path that winds up over a hill and through a break in the treeline.

Past the trees, there’s a small airstrip with an Eclipse 500 sitting on it.

They both get out.

“Who am I dealing with, Tony?” Jack demands.

Tony grabs him by the arm and tries to drag him toward the plane. Jack plants his feet.

“Talk to me!”

“The guy who owns this property and the plane.”

“Why is he doing this for you?”

“I did some work for him. All right?”

Jack doesn’t respond.

“I can’t believe you’re fighting me so hard on this. I can’t fucking believe you!”

“Do you know what I did today?” Jack roars, pulling his arm away from Tony. “I won’t cooperate with terrorists just to get away from the consequences -”

“There are no terrorists here, Jack!” Tony yells, getting right up in his face. “Just me! Just you and me!”

They stare at each other, breathing hard. Jack’s face is warm. His whole body is warm, even as the cold breeze whips against him.

He turns and begins to walk to the plane. The doors opens and a guy wearing earmuffs and a leather jacket appears, beckoning them.

The ubiquitous leather jacket. Jack wonders if Emerson gave them out to all his affiliates.

“Hey there,” says Earmuffs.

“Jack, this is Mark West,” Tony says. He sounds uncomfortable. “West, Jack Bauer.”

“Yeah. I’ve heard a lot about you,” West smarms.

Jack isn’t sure what to say to that.

“I thought you were just going to send your pilot,” Tony says. He sounds edgy.

“You know, I was, and then I thought hey, I haven’t been to Bermuda in years, why not accompany you?” He flashes a smile.

Jack nudges Tony. “We have to go.”

“Yeah,” he responds. “Yeah, of course. Go.”

West disappears back into the plane, and Jack steps inside.


	2. 2

As they take off, Jack takes a seat toward the back and is trying to catch some more sleep when someone taps him on the knee.

He sits up, groggy again.

“Hi there,” says West.

He and Tony are sitting in the seats in front of and across from him, respectively. West stands and holds the back of his seat, swaying slightly.

“I think since I’m getting you out of the country, I deserve a bit of light conversation in exchange.”

Jack glances over at Tony, who tilts his head like _go on_.

“Okay,” Jack says, turning back to West, who reminds him of Secretary Heller in this new light. It’s something about the stern, wide line of his jaw.

“Tony killed Emerson,” West says matter-of-factly. “Now, I didn’t like Emerson all that much. I thought he was a bit of a prick, myself. But we had a good business relationship, and I’m of the opinion that he didn’t have to die. That he wouldn’t have if you weren’t in the picture. If Tony hadn’t wanted to protect you.”

Jack shakes his head. “Killing Emerson was vital to protecting Tony’s cover.”

“See, I don’t think so. I think if he had let Emerson kill you, that would have proved his loyalty once again. _That_ would have gotten him back undercover. But he wouldn’t. He’d rather shoot this guy, who was a real good friend of his, he’d rather shoot him dead than let him hurt you. Now, I guess what I’m asking here, is what is so special about you, Jack Bauer?” He leans forward. “Enemy of terrorism. Destroyer of presidencies. What makes you so important?”

“Tony and I go way back,” says Jack.

In his peripheral vision, Tony shifts uncomfortably.

“That doesn’t exactly answer my question,” West says.

“Maybe not,” Jack snaps, “but all you asked me for was _an_ answer.”

West stares at him for a moment and lets out a hoot of a laugh. “I like the cut of your jib, Bauer,” he says. “I’ll let it go for now. I just thought you should know I don’t trust you, and as of his little turncoat operation, I don’t trust this one over here.” He jabs his thumb in Tony’s direction.

He smiles, staring Jack down.

“Just get me out of the country,” says Jack, staring right back. “That’s all I need.”

West nods slowly, turns, and settles back into his seat.

 

/

 

Jack wakes up to the sun setting on the ocean outside his window, feeling alert and on edge.

West is up in the cockpit, sitting in the co-pilot seat, talking in soft tones with the pilot. Jack can’t hear them from where he’s sitting.

He glances over at Tony. His eyes are closed, and his head tipped back against the headrest.

“You asleep?”

“No,” Tony says immediately.

Jack nods. “What were you doing in Alaska?” he says.

It may be out of left field, but he’s not quite sure how to talk to Tony anymore. It feels like he has to startle answers out of him.

Tony snorts. “We’ll talk at the hotel,” he says, eyes still closed.

Jack fiddles with his thumbnail for a moment, scraping at a black mark. “I would have liked to know, you know. That you weren’t inside. We could have been in touch.”

“I was trying to clear my head, Jack.”

“You can’t do that with me around?”

“I really can’t,” Tony says, so soft Jack almost can’t hear him.

“Landing in twenty,” West yells from the front.

“Copy that,” Jack calls back, and then to Tony: “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“It’s complicated,” Tony says.

Jack nods. “Thanks,” he says. “For today.”

Tony cracks a smile for the first time. “Sure.”

 

/

 

They touch down on a dirt landing strip in the forest. It’s pitchy night, but there’s a full moon.

“Welcome to paradise,” says the pilot.

Jack is the first to get out. Bermuda is hot, in a sticky, nasty way. Even after all his time in places like Kuwait, and even Los Angeles, it sets him ill at ease.

Tony gets out behind him, carrying a duffel.

“What’s that?”

“Clothes, toiletries, weapons...” Off his look, Tony adds, “I left it with West on my way down. You thought we wouldn’t need anything?”

“I don’t know what I thought,” says Jack, shaking his head. “I’m out of it.”

“Get back into it.”

Now he’s feeling woozy all of a sudden. It could be the heat, could be blood loss, could be exhaustion, could be shock, could be all four.

Tony’s staring at him. “West,” he calls.

“Yeah?” West moves to the door of the plane.

“How long you gonna be here?”

“A day. We need to refuel.”

“Where’s that doctor you told me about?”

West motions him over. Jack sits down on the hard-packed dirt of the runway, trying to keep his breathing even.

“Here,” he says, handing Tony a card.

Tony slips it in his pocket. He comes back to Jack and helps him to his feet. “Our taxi’s about a mile north. You good?”

“I’m fine,” Jack says, nettled. “When did you call a taxi?”

“Jesus, Jack, when is the third degree going to stop? I’m not the one who went berserk today.”

“No, you went berserk for three years w -”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it, Jack. Heard it fifty times. You know, Bill and Chloe didn’t ask me half this many questions.”

"Bill and Chloe never knew you like I do."

Tony looks at him for a beat.

"Yeah, I guess not,” he says. “Let’s get going.”

 

/

 

The taxi driver takes them to the offices of the doctor, and Tony tells him to wait out front and then take them back to the hotel when they’re ready.

“Where are you getting all this money?” Jack mutters as they step into the elevator.

Tony hits the button for the fifth floor. “I made a lot in my time with the group, had nothing to spend it on... and I had savings,” he adds, his voice wavering a tiny bit. “From my time in the private sector.”

Jack nods. “Okay,” he says. “Sorry for prying.”

All roads lead back to Michelle. He knows how that feels. Even now, so many years later. Kim looks like him for the most part, but sometimes there’s a furrow in her brow that’s so _Teri_.

“It’s all right, Jack,” Tony says softly.

The elevators stops and they get out. The offices are deserted. They turn the corner and there’s one receptionist behind a desk, talking on the phone.

“He thinks he’s an expert or something,” she says. "Because he took one abnormal psych course at BYU? Please..." She’s idly doodling while she talks.

“Hey,” Tony calls.

She looks up. “Hold on a sec,” she says into the phone, and sets it down. “Hi, who are you here to see?”

“Doctor...” Tony pulls out the card West gave him. “Shipman.”

“Ohhhh,” she says, getting up. “Okay, just a moment.”

She picks up a different phone and hits one button.

Jack, feeling woozy, squeezes his eyes shut and breathes in through his nose. He hasn’t felt this off since he got infected with the prion variant.

“Dr. Shipman? I have two people here to see you... Yeah. Who referred you?” she asks Tony.

“Mark West.”

She repeats that into the phone and falls quiet. “Okay, it’s the first door on the left,” she says, hanging up.

They go in.

It’s luxurious, for a examination room. Large and gleaming.

“Just a moment,” Shipman calls from behind a door on the wall opposite.

Jack sits on the exam table and pulls his shirt off. He’s clammy and pale, and time seems to be moving more slowly than usual. He rubs his palms against the thighs of his jeans.

Tony’s looking at him.

“I’m fine,” Jack says, for what feels like the fiftieth time in the last two days.

“I know.”

“I just need a transfusion.”

“I know.”

“What time is it?”

“Nine thirty.”

“How'd you know he'd be here?”

“West called him. And he’s a mob doctor, Jack, he works weird hours.”

“What the hell did you do for West that he’s going to all this trouble?”

“I blew him,” Tony says with a crooked smile.

His stomach jumps and he scowls. “Come on.”

“He always wanted a lot of wetwork from Emerson. And Emerson put me on it. I was his best guy.”

He looks up at the ceiling.

“I saw the kind of connections he had and after a while I said I don’t want your money anymore, start banking favors for me. I’ll keep working for you, but someday I’m going to need something from you and you’re going to give it to me, no questions asked.”

“He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to keep his word.”

Tony shrugs and looks back at Jack. “I have plenty of dirt on him. And he’s afraid of me.”

Jack nods.

“You too. That’s why he gave you such a hard time.”

“Yeah, sure.”

"Lots of people are scared of you, Jack."

Shipman comes out, flapping his hands like he’s air-drying them. “Hi there,” he says, “what seems to be the problem?”

Jack gestures at his bandaged torso. “Double stab wounds, double GSWs. I’ve lost a lot of blood and the second stab wound needs stitches.”

Shipman nods. “Okay. I’ll be back in a moment to take a look and then we’ll take care of that. Blood type?”

“B positive.”

“Excellent.” He beams. “I do have that.”

He disappears back into his little chamber.

Jack looks back at Tony.

“I guess what I keep trying to ask is, why are you doing this for me?”

Tony runs his hand over his buzzcut. “We’re friends.”

Jack just looks at him.

“Move over,” Tony says, and hops up on the exam table next to him. “All right,” he says. “I had a lot of time to think those three years.”

“Sure.”

“I thought about me. I thought about why I had gotten into the government work in the first place. Why I made the decisions I made.” He shakes his head. “I thought about you, and how we different we were... and I thought about Michelle, and how the two of you seemed more alike than she and I were, or you and me.”

“Tony...”

“I kind of got an idea going,” he says, "that it’s all about who we feel responsibility to.”

He gets a little choked up and stares into middle ground for a moment, blinking back tears.

“I never felt personally responsible for the greater good,” Tony says. “She always did. You do, even if it gets mixed up for you, like today. But, you know, the sacrifices Michelle was willing to make... She wouldn’t help terrorists. She’d let herself get captured by Saunders. She went into that hotel without any protection. She knew what was important.”

He takes a heaving breath.

“She died doing what she knew was right,” Tony says. “She was going back to CTU. She knew they needed her help. I didn’t want her to. I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have even thought about it. If I could go back and do it over I would have been the first to the car, but because of her. I’d die for her, but would I die for a hundred faceless people? I wouldn’t give her up for a _million_ faceless people. I had the chance and I didn’t... Look, I was at CTU for a long time. And I lied to myself that I would. I knew in my head it was right. But I never felt it the way she did.”

They hear Shipman slam a cabinet door. Tony drops his voice.

“Or the way you do. I can’t let anything happen to you, Jack. I already screwed up. I did exactly what she wouldn’t have wanted me to do when I joined up with Emerson.”

He slides off of the table and walks away, facing away from Jack, who sits there motionless. His heart is clenched.

“What I saw in her were the same things I saw in you,” Tony says. His voice is almost unrecognizable as his right now, high-pitched and messy with tears he’s holding back. “What I liked about you. As much as I hated what you did to Campbell, I respected it. I had to. I didn’t trust you because of it. I didn’t trust you the whole time we were... y’know. And what I figured out is it’s not as simple as it looks. It’s not the government and the terrorists. It’s the Jack Bauers and the Christopher Hendersons. It’s the -” his voice cracks “- it’s the Michelle Desslers and the Tony Almeidas.”

“You’re not the bad guy,” Jack says.

Tony turns back to him, hands on his hips. “I didn’t say I was.” He’s calmer now, like there’s a weight off his shoulders.

“No, just that you’re weak.”

“I didn’t say that either. Jack, don’t you get it? It doesn’t mean you’re better than me. It means that for whatever reason, you’re willing to sacrifice for your morals in a way I’m not. In a way I never was. All right?”

Jack thinks about it, really thinks about it. And he can understand the reasoning, but more than that, he can understand why Tony needs to believe it.

Tony couldn’t protect Michelle. But Tony can protect him. He can take the burden of sacrifice from Jack, even if it’s just for a day.

And isn’t that what he always loved about Tony? The escape? The relief? The release? Isn’t that what they were to each other? Whatever the other needed. Two chameleons.

So he says yes.

He gets it.

 

/

 

The blood transfusion takes about two hours. Shipman is interested to find that even though he’s lost almost two pints of blood, he’s made it this long without even passing out. “You’re a unique case,” he says, looking at Jack with undisguised fascination.

When they finally get out of there, it’s nearing midnight.

The taxi ride is short. Bermuda is small, but beautiful and lush. The buildings are painted bright colors and lit up despite the hour.

“Hey,” Tony murmurs as they pull up in front of the hotel.

“Yeah?”

“You hungry?”

He hasn’t thought about food all day. “Yeah,” he says. “I really am.”

“Good, me too,” he says, heaving the duffel over his shoulder. “We’ll get room service.” He slams the trunk and hands the taxi driver a wad of cash. The driver beams.

They hang out in the foyer, waiting for the young, pimply desk clerk to extract himself from an argument with an older gentleman who’s upset about the thread count of the sheets in his room.

Jack shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Shipman gave him a heavy dose of morphine and he’s feeling a little weird now. Good weird - where you’re warm and want to touch everything and laugh at nothing.

Jack looks at Tony, who cocks his head at Thread Count Guy and rolls his eyes. Jack smirks.

Finally the guy toddles off grumbling to the elevators and the desk clerk starts checking them in. Tony gives his name as Vic Mendez and says, “If anyone calls here looking for two guys matching our description... we’re not here, okay?”

“We don’t give out guest information anyway, sir,” says the clerk, but he looks askance at Jack, who put the hat and sunglasses back on after they left the doctor. “Except in the case of a criminal investigation…”

Jack’s mouth forms a stern line.

The kid looks back down at his computer. “Two beds?” he asks.

Tony clears his throat and shifts away from Jack. “Yeah.”

“Room 834,” he says, handing Tony two keycards. “Enjoy your stay.”


	3. 3

The hotel room is nicer than he expected. Less spartan than an American hotel in the same price range. There’s a balcony. As soon as he sets the duffel down, Tony goes over to it and frees the drapes so they cover the sliding glass door, which the very bright full moon was shining through.

Jack crouches next to the duffel and starts pulling things out. Clothes for tomorrow, toothpaste, and a pistol. He slides a clip in and sets it in the drawer of the nightstand between the beds. Right next to the Bible.

A small light goes on underneath a pair of jeans, and then he hears a ringtone.

Jack fishes the phone out.

“Who is it?” Tony demands, crossing the room in a few panicked strides.

“It’s a New York area code,” Jack says. He looks at Tony. “Who has this number?”

“In New York? Uh... has to be Chloe.”

Jack’s thumb moves to the call button.

“Jack, wait.”

“She wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important.”

Tony puts a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Fine,” he says. “Pick it up.”

He does.

“Hello?”

“Jack? Jack Bauer?”

The connection isn’t very good, but he can tell it’s a man’s voice with a British accent.

“Who is this?”

Tony taps him. He puts it on speaker.

“It’s Morris, Morris O’Brian. Chloe gave me this number to call if something went sideways.”

“Morris...” Jack shakes his head. “What’s going on? Why are you calling? Is Chloe all right?”

“No, the FBI’s got her, they came here an hour ago and dragged her off -”

Jack’s gut twists.

“She’s under arrest, Jack, I’ve been on the phone this whole time trying to find a lawyer to take her case. She’s not talking. She’s trying to protect you.”

“She doesn’t even know where I am,” Jack says. “What’s the charge? What did they take her in on?”

Morris doesn’t answer.

Tony sits down next to Jack. “Morris,” he says.

“Who’s this, now?”

“Tony Almeida.”

There’s a pause. “The terrorist?”

"Chloe’s former boss,” Tony says peevishly.

“And... reformed terrorist?”

“I was the one who got Jack out. Look, does Chloe have an office?”

“Sort of. She’s got an area here in the living room where she keeps all of her paperwork and her laptop.”

“Burn the papers. Smash the laptop. When you get off the phone with us, smash the phone. Get rid of all of it. And don’t call this number again.”

“But -”

“Just do it.”

“Isn’t there anything else you’ve got for me?” Morris says. “Advice, anything? I can’t have her go to prison. I can’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack says. “I didn’t force her to help me. She did it because she believed it was the right thing to do.”

“We have a son,” Morris says. “You know that, Jack. He’s only a boy.”

A shadow passes over Tony’s face. If Jack weren’t so close to him, he wouldn’t have even noticed it.

“Morris,” Tony says into the phone, “do what you have to do.”

He hangs up.

Jack runs his hands through his hair. “I didn’t want any of this. Christ.” He can feel his pulse thudding with adrenaline, cutting through the nice buzz from the morphine.

“Chloe’s not stupid, Jack. She’ll figure something out.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.”

“I’m taking a shower. Order us some food?”

“What do you want?”

“Whatever they have this late. A burger.”

 

/

 

Twenty minutes later Jack has finished eating, popped two Vicodins, and is watching the news. His face is blessedly scarce; all anyone cares about right now is President Taylor.

“It’s obvious there was a conspiracy from the very beginning with this treaty, and when it came time to sign, she panicked!”

Talking heads are bitching at each other.

“Now, hold on, hold on, hold on,” says the other pundit. “She... How do we know Taylor didn’t find out moments before she walked into the signing room? We have no idea.”

“That’s the party line of the liberals, everybody gets the benefit of the doubt if they’re yours! If that was Keeler up there putting his pen away and going ‘oh, never mind, there’s blood on everyone’s hands here’, and then disappearing to Air Force One, you’d be calling for his head on a pike!”

“That’s a ridiculous accusation, and in poor taste.”

“It’s a legitimate accusation! Where the hell is Taylor?”

“We don’t know, _yet_ -”

“And now we find out - we get all of this coming out about Logan, and why he was really impeached. Now you remember I always said they were covering something up with him. They get rid of a President and we never find out the full extent of what he did? All of that bluster about fraud? Now they’re telling us he was responsible for that airport attack in California, and had his fingers in all of Taylor’s pies, and tried to blow his brains out in the UN! I want answers! America wants answers!”

“I’m sure we’ll get them in the fullness of time,” the second pundit says. It’s clear he’s nervous. “The truth will always come out. You have to trust the sys -”

“Didn’t you hear me just now? It sure as hell didn’t when it came to Logan!”

Tony is coming out of the bathroom in a wave of steam, wearing nothing but a towel. Jack stares at the T.V., but in his peripheral vision, he can see Tony face away from him, drop the towel, and pull on a pair of boxers and a t-shirt. Jack tries not to notice the brief flash of his bare ass.

Tries, and fails.

“Taylor is not like Logan. We never elected him. His approval rating never reached the heights hers did.”

“Too moderate!” the author of the 'his head on a pike' comment booms.

“Well, he made many mistakes -”

“Peace with Russia will _always_ end in tragedy for America!”

Tony shakes his head. “What are they talking about?”

“Not me,” Jack says.

“Good.”

Tony sits next to him and starts eating his burger. Jack sinks back into the pillows. Vicodin is _great._ Tony is great. He smells like soap. And the news is hilarious.

Tony is looking at him funny.

“What?”

“Vicodin's an opiate.”

It is an opiate. Morphine is also an opiate. He's had the latter since getting out of the program. In hospitals, closely monitored, but he doesn’t think there’s any nurse in America as eagle-eyed as Tony. Not when it comes to him.

He lets his eyelids drop. Tony slips the remote out of his hand and the TV goes silent.

When he comes to again about ten minutes later, there’s a muted baseball game on, and Tony has a beer from the minibar.

“If you’re gonna ride me about the Vicodin, I’m gonna ride you about that,” Jack says, anticipating that “ride me” is an entendre Tony won’t be able to resist hitting back at him.

But Tony just snorts, not touching it. “Go ahead.”

“Fine.”

He knows he’s inviting something here. He lies to himself that he can’t help it. Tony just brings out the bad guy in him, the sadist, because he’s all too happy to play the corresponding part. That’s how it was when they were seeing each other, anyway.

_Come up to my office. Dim the glass. Get on your knees._

And Tony would get on his knees, his eyes glinting with mischief in the dim light. Yes, Mr. Bauer. _Yeah._ But the next day he’d turn around and question Jack’s authority in front of the whole floor. That was their game.

They look at each other. Tony’s expression is lazy and satisfied. He’s always been able to rile Jack better than Jack could rile him.

A moment passes where neither of them even move. They just look at each other for what feels like the first time all day. The first time in a long time. New wrinkles and new scars on both of them. Everything feels like a million years ago; even today and yesterday feel like a million years ago. All the pain and death and confusion.

And then being pulled from the fire by Tony. Tony, who stares at him with his dark dark eyes, who reels him in with that softness of his. No other man has ever been this soft with him, this yielding, this open. No other man has wound his way through Jack’s life like a black cat, following him, mirroring him, coming in and out like the tide.

Jack reaches out and touches his arm. He’s so warm. His face colors at the feel of Jack’s fingers. 

“Jack,” Tony says. His voice is almost inaudible. It could be a warning or an invitation.

He leans forward anyway. Tony’s hand comes up and cups the side of his face and moves to his neck.

Jack moves in and stops. He's taking a beat to implicitly ask for permission; they both know this is more than a kiss. It’s an opening of floodgates.

His cock pulses uncomfortably against the crotch of his jeans. He’s close enough to count Tony’s eyelashes.

“Jack...”

This time it sounds like _please._

They kiss. Slow at first. But they’re desperate to have their hands on each other and they both know it. And then Tony’s tongue is in Jack’s mouth, and vice versa, and it’s filthy, and Jack can’t believe how much he’s missed it. Relief is coursing through his body.

Tony sucks his bottom lip and he almost loses it, grabbing him around the neck. He wants that mouth on his cock. He wants it on his neck. He wants it everywhere.

Tony pushes him back against the bed and Jack rolls his hips against the inside of Tony’s thigh, getting a very satisfying noise out of him. They kiss like they can’t stop.

And then Jack rolls his hips again, brushes his hard cock against him. _Ride me._ But Tony draws back, slowly. His hand is still cupping Jack’s face.

They stare at each other. Jack watches Tony’s pupils shrink back to normal. His eyes keep flicking down to Jack’s mouth.

“What?” Jack says. It comes out low and husky.

“I don’t know.”

He wants it, Jack can tell from his voice. But there are other things in there too.

“Talk to me,” Jack says.

They stay like that, against each other, holding each other, just breathing.

He’s stroking Jack’s jawline with his thumb.

“I missed you.”

It sounds so stark, out loud like that. But it’s true. How could he not?

“I missed you,” Tony says back. He says it so softly, like he's afraid it'll break in his mouth.

Jack stays quiet.

“I know you, Jack. We could... get together, tonight, and for you it’d be like the last fifteen years never happened.”

He thinks of Renee. He’s sure Tony is thinking of her too.

“And what about you?”

“I want to sleep on it.”

Jack moves his knee so it’s against Tony’s hard-on.

“All right, don't listen to him, he hasn't gotten the message yet down there.”

Jack laughs.

“Yeah,” he says, “we can sleep on it.”

He _is_ tired. Bone-tired. But the idea of picking up where they left off filled him with a crazy energy. That same energy that got him through these past two days. A kind of mania, almost.

Tony gets up and climbs into the other bed. The light goes off a moment later, and Jack is left with the darkness.

 

/

 

The next day he wakes up with a weird woozy feeling. He knows he’s slept too long by the length of the shadows on the floor.

The TV is on. Tony is leaning against the doorframe to the bathroom.

He rouses.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Jack says.

“You’re a talking point today.”

“Great,” he groans. He’s stiff all over.

Tony turns the volume up.

“I remember this guy, I remember him from the Senate hearings,” says Anderson Cooper. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, he’s _so_ angry.’”

Tony snorts.

“I’ve talked to a lot of veterans with PTSD, and what we do to people who do this kind of work is reprehensible, really. We train these people in a certain way, we make them think they’re absolutely vital to national security, and then when it comes out what they’ve done, what they’ve been ordered to do, we turn our backs on them. Or, when, you know, the technology or the strategy moves on and they’re no longer useful. We just abandon them.”

Tony puts the mute back on. Jack rubs his eyes.

“I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“What time is it?”

“Three.”

He sits there, staring at his own palms and thinking.

“The rest of them aren’t being so sympathetic.”

“Who?”

“The media. Taylor’s getting it worse, though.”

Jack feels a rush of childish anger rise in his chest. “She should be.”

Tony’s quiet.

There’s a sudden beeping from the duffel. Tony lunges for it and pulls out a small tablet. He touches the screen and spreads his fingers like he’s enlarging something.

“What?”

Tony’s eyes flick over the screen. Once and then twice. He sets it on the bed next to Jack.

“A retired KGB agent is on his way to Bermuda. Got flagged during a layover in Belarus.”

“Damn it.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything. Let me get some more background.”

“You do that. I’m taking a walk.”

“Jack, you can’t leave.”

“I’ll take a gun. I need some air.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Fine.”

 

/

 

The beach is beautiful.

Not as nice as in the brochures, but beautiful. It’s packed with people. Kids run around screaming and laughing as their parents chase them, trying to put sunscreen on their already pink faces. There’s a cool breeze coming off the ocean. Some people are huddling in their towels.

He can picture Kim here, with her family. It hurts how well he can picture it.

They keep walking, down to a little cove where there’s enough ambient noise that they won’t be heard, and sit off to the side, in the shade of a tree, inconspicuous.

They do all of this automatically, without even looking at each other. There are still some things they don’t have to talk about.

Jack leans back with his palms against the sand.

“What’s his name?”

“Christof Matveyev.”

“How long in the KGB?”

“Twenty years.”

“Why’d he retire?”

“I don’t know if he did. That’s the thing. He could be operating privately now.”

“Do you think he is?”

“I put some feelers out.”

“Who do you know in Russia?”

“Not Russians.”

Jack snorts.

“There’s something off about this,” Tony says.

“Which part?”

“Why would they send one guy? One guy, with this record, who’s _this_ conspicuous. Who I knew about before he even made it out of Europe.”

Jack mulls it over. “To flush us out?”

“Yeah.”

“So we do nothing?”

“We can’t do nothing, he’s going to start poking around and know you’ve been here. Isn’t a big jump from there to find out we haven’t left yet. And since they know that if we’re here, we know he’s here, if we disappear completely, that’s a red flag, too.”

“We? You think they know about you?”

“West could have broke. Or sold us out.”

“Damnit...”

“It was short notice,” Tony says, bristling like he always does. “No one else was available.”

“I’m bitching about him, not you.”

There’s a pause.

“If he does know, we can use that.”

“You want to...”

“Talk to him, yeah.”

“That’s not the right play. It’s too dangerous.”

“Jack, don’t even start. You can cover me. I brought gear. I’ll make a deal with him for your location, and give him something to get him off your trail. If he knows West he probably knows I flipped -”

“You double flipped.”

“That’s why it makes sense that I would flip on you,” Tony says. “No one knows what my motives are, or if I even have any. It makes sense that I’d sell you out. And then the two of us’ll have extra cash, too.”

“He’s going to wonder why would I trust you in the first place.”

Tony thinks about that one for a minute.

“I’ll just tell him we’re friends. We go back, he’d see that in our records.”

“If he’d see that he’d probably see that we were involved.”

Tony flinches at that, almost imperceptibly.

“Would you use that?”

“If I have to,” Tony says.

Jack shakes his head. “This doesn’t mean anything if he’s not even here for us. He could just be on vacation. We’ll have to...”

“Scope him out.”

“What else did you bring?”

“Everything I had.”

“Good. We’ll need it.”


	4. 4

They spend the rest of the day walking around the boardwalk in sunglasses, blending into the crowd, and talking in a combination of hushed tones, half-sentences and code.

They haven’t been this close in a while. Even when they were seeing each other it was half hatefucking, half power play. Then for a while they alternated between being the only ones who had each other’s backs and being on opposite sides of the law, bitch-slapping each other in hallways. Not the most stable relationship.

Tony has mellowed out. He’s in the same position Jack was before Aruz came knocking: his bad luck has wound down, and he’s left picking up the pieces of his life. Left deciding whether or not to move on and join the human race again.

So right now is more like the old days than everything else. More like 1999. They’re working toward a common goal, fighting side by side.

“What were you going to give him?”

Tony is perusing a shelf of visors with sayings like “Have a Bermudaful day!” on them.

“I was thinking Africa.”

Jack nods. “Fits my profile.”

Tony looks at his watch. “Want to grab dinner at the hotel?”

“When’s our friend arriving?”

“0200 hours.”

“And he’ll need a day or two to get settled.”

“Yeah.”

“Sure.”

“Good,” Tony murmurs.

“You two gonna _buy_ anything, or just creep around,” calls the cashier, whose nametag says _Call Me Tito!_

“We’re leaving,” Tony calls back.

“You touched all my hats, you’re not even gonna buy a hat?”

Tony grabs five pairs of sunglasses off of a nearby rack and throws a fifty down on the counter. “Okay?”

“Well, what about tax?”

He throws down a five as well.

“Nice doing business with you,” says Tito.

Jack takes Tony’s sleeve and pulls him toward the door. Tony rolls his eyes on their way out.

 

/

 

They get back to the hotel around 7, in time for the dinner rush, and stand around waiting for a table to open up. The only other people waiting are middle-aged, sweet-looking white couples.

No one seems to be recognizing Jack, which stands to reason. He hasn’t been on the news very much, Taylor’s impeachment being the hottest topic, and the photo of him they’ve been distributing is his old CTU staff photo, when he was younger and his hair was lighter. He pushed his sunglasses up onto his head a while ago.

They’re seated without any incident.

“Can I get you guys any drinks?” says a waiter, appearing at Jack’s elbow.

“Budweiser,” says Jack, after glancing at the menu.

“Same here,” says Tony.

“I’ll be right back with those.”

 

/

 

They wind up talking for a while after they finish their food. Talking, and drinking. The waiter keeps coming around, asking if they want their check, and they keep getting rid of him.

Jack tries to take the drinking slowly, because he’s getting a distinct vibe from Tony, and their legs are bumping under the table, and fucking is enough of an athletic endeavor at fifty-something without booze interfering.

So he’s put away a beer and a half to Tony’s three when the waiter comes over for the eighth time and tells them, apologetically, that the restaurant is closing for the night and they need to pay up and get out.

“Charge it to our room,” Jack says. “834.”

“Will do, sir.”

Tony is pretty steady on his feet, considering, but he and Jack lean on each other and bump shoulders all the way up to their room, and then Jack drops the room key outside their door and they can’t stop laughing.

“So - I could have sworn we only did hand stuff that first time.”

“Nah, there was definitely a blowjob,” Tony says, settling onto the bed closest to the door. He takes his jacket off and tosses it to the side.

Jack moves closer to him and Tony puts his hands on Jack’s sides, then moves them up and down, up and down, slowly.

“I guess I forgot when that first blowjob was. It was a _great_ blowjob.”

“Yeah, my finest act as a CTU operative.”

Jack laughs.

Tony’s right hand moves from Jack’s side to his hipbone, and then to his crotch, and he slides it up against Jack’s thigh. He just barely brushes his cock, but he does quite a bit for Jack with that little gesture.

Small, sturdy hands. He wants them everywhere.

The hand moves away, back up to his hipbone. Jack tips his head back.

Tony knows what he’s thinking before he thinks it. “We’d have to be careful of your stitches.”

“We’ll take it slow,” Jack says, and now that it’s on the table, he feels free to throw Tony back against the bed, hands on his chest.

Tony snorts. “Hold on,” he says, and pushes Jack’s hands off of him. He gets up and walks into the bathroom, coming back with a small brown paper bag. “Here.”

He lies back down on the bed with his head on the pillow, chest heaving and face flushed.

Jack takes out a small box of condoms and a tube of lube. “When’d you buy these?”

“When you were walking on the boardwalk.”

Jack’s quiet.

“I’m familiar with that look you kept giving me today, Jack.”

He kneels down on the bed, between Tony’s legs, and starts unwrapping a condom. He tosses the foil on the floor and sets the condom proper on a bump in the bedspread.

Tony watches him idly.

Jack undoes his own fly and then slips out of his pants, kicking them to the floor. He’s overcome and buzzing out of his skin but he reminds himself to take it slow, be gentle with himself. To be gentle with Tony too.

He thinks of Renee, of picking her up and carrying her off. Was that only a few days ago? She was so flighty and wonderful and strange, a bird in his hand. She was always too much like him. They couldn’t see past each other. Tony is always different... like how stepping into the ocean used to feel. Dark depths, a familiar undertow of current.

Tony undoes his fly, and Jack pulls his pants off by the cuffs, then moves forward over him. Jack cups his face and Tony grabs Jack by the forearm, stroking him with his thumb. His eyes are glittering in the darkness; his breathing is getting more and more uneven. Jack’s, too. Neither of them thought they would ever be together like this again. The reality of it is overwhelming.

With his free hand he pulls his boxers down over his ass and slides the condom onto himself. It takes him two tries to get it on properly.

Tony’s boxers come off too, bunched in Jack’s hand and then on a heap on the floor, and he squeezes some lube onto his fingers.

He leans forward again, one hand over Tony’s shoulder, pressed against the bed, with the other hovering awkwardly over his pelvis.

He makes a move south and Tony’s eyes close. Jack can tell he’s biting the inside of his lip.

“What?”

“Just give me a second.”

“Take whatever time you need,” says Jack, even as his cock is swelling in an uncomfortable way against the latex of the condom and lube is dribbling off his fingers and onto the bed.

“All right, just do it,” Tony says, grabbing Jack by the shoulder, and then moving his hand up slowly so he has Jack by the back of the neck.

He slides one finger in quickly. Tony lets out a shuddering little gasp that hits Jack right in the lowest part of his gut, and his grip around Jack’s neck tightens.

Two fingers. It’s already a tight squeeze. That’s not a good sign.

“Relax,” Jack murmurs.

Tony’s eyelids are at half mast and his dick is hard against Jack’s stomach.

“I’m working on it,” he says huskily.

Jack pushes a third finger in halfway through that sentence, hoping to catch him off guard. Tony makes a hiccupy noise, and his hips move like a call-and-response to Jack’s hand, and something changes in that moment. It’s as if their bodies recognize each other.

Tony’s muscles ease and he rubs his thumb over Jack’s jawline, like, _go ahead_.

In one swift motion he reaches over for the lube again, squeezes a generous amount into his palm, and rubs it over himself.

Jack guides himself in, staring into Tony’s eyes as he does. Tony takes in a shallow breath and for a moment Jack feels like his cock is in a vise, but on the exhale he moves forward, his weight back onto the arm by Tony’s head, and he’s fully into him. It’s the best he’s felt all day.

Tony’s hand moves to his face and grabs at him desperately. Jack thrusts forward again, as slow as he possibly can. Tony’s pupils are big, crowding out his irises, and his eyes have a glassy look like he’s not quite here.

“Hey,” Jack mutters.

“Hey,” Tony says softly. “Jack...” he strokes Jack’s jawline again. “Christ.”

And they fuck.

It’s everything Jack thought it should be, and it’s everything they need from each other in that moment. Jack needs to trust Tony, and vice versa, and they could talk in circles for months without getting anywhere. They could never communicate very well that way. It’s not them. This... this is them. The amount of faith it takes for Tony to let him do this. The darkness and the silence. Tony’s wide eyes and soft little noises as Jack shifts around and thrusts into him, noises it’s clear he doesn’t even mean to make, which makes them all the better.

“Jack,” Tony murmurs again, and he pauses.

“Yeah?”

“Could you, uh...” his voice has a strange quality to it. “You know.”

Jack doesn’t.

So Tony reaches up and grabs Jack roughly around the neck to demonstrate.

_Oh._ He’d forgotten that Tony likes that.

“Yeah,” Jack says. He leans forward over him, reaching for the tissues on the bedside table. Tony lets out a pained noise as he does.

“Sorry,” Jack says, sitting up and wiping off his lubed-up hand.

“Don’t worry about it,” Tony mutters.

Jack puts his hand back where it was, bracing himself against the bed again, and then starts thrusting in a faster rhythm.

Tony moans and Jack brings his free hand up to Tony’s throat. Not pressing. Just resting there, like a warning, which by itself is enough to make Tony start leaking precome on Jack’s stomach.

On a harder thrust he squeezes, right above Tony’s adam’s apple, constricting his throat just enough for him to feel it. Tony makes a soft, choked noise, and Jack feels himself barreling toward the edge. He closes his eyes. _Don’t come yet, don’t come yet._

“Harder,” Tony says hoarsely.

“I don’t like doing this,” Jack says.

“What, hurting me? Please, Jack,” he wheezes. “You do.”

Jack doesn’t answer that, but he does wrap his hand tighter around Tony’s throat and gets back into a steady rhythm of fucking him. There’s a stabbing pain in his side and he ignores it, ignores everything, until he can feel himself about to come again and slows, takes his hand off of Tony.

Tony gasps for air. He looks like he’s about there himself; there’s a dark flush high in his cheeks and his eyes are shining.

Jack comes then. He couldn’t hold on any longer. Black spots dance on the outskirts of his vision, and the relief and release is almost too much for him.

Tony grabs him by the face again, like he needs to hold onto something, and Jack puts his hand over Tony’s. They stay like that for a long moment, then he pulls out of him and lies down next to him. They breathe together for a while.

But before they get comfortable, Tony gets up and heads for the bathroom like he always does.

Jack follows and finds him running the bath, trailing his fingers under the water like he’s waiting for it to cool down or warm up. He closes the door behind them.

“Hey.”

Tony glances at him. In the harsh light of the bathroom, Jack can see red marks already blooming on the skin of his neck.

“You’re bleeding,” says Tony.

Jack’s hand goes to his side, and then he looks down at his fingers.

Tony turns the shower on and tilts his head back, letting the water run over his face. Jack steps in behind him and slides his hand down Tony’s side, then wraps it around his cock and begins to jerk him off. He comes in short order, his body rocking back against Jack’s, and Jack holds his hand out under the showerhead, rinsing the come from between his fingers.

They stand there a little longer than necessary, enjoying the water, and then Tony walks out of the bathroom. Jack shuts the faucet off.

He comes back with boxers on and another bag in his hand as Jack’s toweling himself off, kneels down in front of Jack, and starts peeling his soaked bandages off. His fingers linger on the second stab wound.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah.”

He pulls fresh bandages and gauze out of the bag and starts fixing Jack up.

“Where’d those come from?”

“Shipman.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he gave me ‘em on the way out.”

“I didn’t notice.”

“You were pretty buzzed.”

Jack’s quiet. He hid the rest of the Vicodin under his own mattress where it wouldn’t tempt him; Tony saying that reminds him of its presence.

“I like you sober.”

Goddamn mind reader.

“I like _you_ sober,” Jack snaps.

Tony rolls his eyes.

“You sure about that? ‘Cause I’m not right now.”

He smooths the gauze against Jack’s ribs. Jack has his hands on Tony’s shoulders and he moves them to his head, running his hands over the strange newness of his buzzcut.

Tony snorts into his stomach. “What?”

“I buried you,” Jack says. “I thought...”

“I know, Jack,” he says, rubbing the small of Jack’s back.

_Stop disappearing._ But how can he say that? Tony’s always been there when he _needed_ him, at the very least. That’s more than he can say vice versa.

_Stop being a ghost. Come back to the land of the living._

Jack is all too fully in the land of the living. If he believed in heaven, or believed he was going there, he might have managed dying in the line of duty all the times he’d tried. But there’s something in him that puts up a desperate fight every time.

He wonders if Tony believes in either of those things.

They stagger back to the bed and get in it together. It started storming outside while they were in the shower and they lie there wrapped in a sheet, listening.

 


	5. 5

They wake up together at 6 sharp. Old habits die hard.

“Matveyev landed,” Tony says, rolling over onto his side.

“Want to go after him?”

“Let him start sniffing around first.”

“We want to find him before he finds us.”

“But without tipping anybody off that might be watching him, in case he’s not watching us.”

“Yeah. Damn it. What else do you have?”

“If I can get a bead on him, I can find out what hotel he’s at.”

“Maybe he’s at a private residence.”

“Shit,” says Tony, sitting up. The sheet falls away from his torso and pools around his crotch. Jack tries valiantly to keep looking him in the eye.

“What?”

“It makes sense, is what, and I didn’t see it. I’ll start cross-referencing every private property on the island with what we have on him.” He leans over Jack, grabbing his tablet off the bedside table, and his fingers start working furiously.

Jack watches him. “You sure you don’t miss CTU?”

He snorts and doesn’t look up.

 

/

 

Tony doesn’t find Matveyev, but he does find out that someone matching Matveyev’s basic description - thin, dark hair, gaunt face - was spotted in conversation with a desk clerk at a hotel near theirs, and left without booking a room.

“All right, thanks,” Tony says, hanging up.

“I’m starting to think he’s here for us,” Jack says drily.

Tony nods.

“Can we talk?”

“About...”

“Us,” Jack says. He feels the urge to look away but fuck it, he’s going to look right into Tony’s eyes, they’re going to have a real conversation about their feelings, because they’re grown adult men and not the idiot teenagers they’re acting like.

But Tony sighs and Jack can feel him slipping out of the conversation already. “What _about_ us?”

“What are we doing, Tony?”

“Sitting on the bed. Talking.”

“Don’t screw around with me. Look at me.”

Tony looks at him, and he looks scared. Pinned in a corner. His eyes are wide. Jack’s reminded of sitting in the back of the van with him and Emerson, and Tony bouncing between the two, not sure who to kneel for. He’s always been a complicated guy, but looking at him now, it’s like Jack can see infinite Tonys stretching into the distance, hiding behind each other, running from each other. Little Tony growing up in tough Chicago. Tony in the Marines, getting the shit kicked out of him, putting on muscle out of necessity. Tony when he came to CTU, a wide-eyed idealist, or as close as he ever got. Then Tony after Jack’s bribery takedowns. Tony before they slept together. Tony after they slept together. Tony with Nina. Tony after Nina’s betrayal. Tony before Michelle. Tony with Michelle. Tony the boss. Tony the enabler. Tony the traitor. Tony in prison. Tony after prison. Tony the drunk.

Tony after Michelle.

Tony after Emerson.

Hollowed out by grief and remade by anger.

“I could have faced the consequences,” Jack said. “I was so tired. I was just laying in that alley. I thought it was really over this time. You had to know that.”

“I didn’t know anything. I didn’t even know you were still alive until Chloe called.”

“You cared about me enough to chase a ghost.”

“We’re friends.”

“It’s not -”

“It’s not what? It’s not what you’re looking for? What you want me to say? I don’t know what you need from me, Jack. How about this, you’re about all I have left. You’re it. Is that enough for you?”

There’s a lump in Jack’s throat.

“You have -”

“I have a lot of things I don’t want. I don’t want money. I don’t want to join up with another gang. I’m tired too. You get that? I’ve been everywhere you are, Jack. And I’m here now and you keep asking me why...”

“Yeah. I know.” Jack laughs without humor. “I just keep looking at my future now and it’s a big blank. I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know how I’m gonna get there, and I don’t know where you fit in, Tony. Or if you even do. Or if you even want to.”

“How about let’s find our Russian now. We can talk long-term later.”

A two-step plan. Jack can always get behind those.

“Fine,” he replies.

For now.

 

/

 

He orders breakfast and Tony goes to take a shower. Jack’s eating when he comes out.

Tony’s flushed red, like he had the water as hot as it could go. There are two fading marks on his neck.

He steals a piece of bacon off Jack’s plate.

“I have a connection on the island.”

“Who?”

“A friend of Emerson.”

“I thought Emerson’s friends are all either dead or hate you.”

“They do, mostly. But this one likes money more than he hates me.”

“Isn’t it a little dangerous, bringing all these people into it? Is it the right play?”

“Give me some credit, Jack. They don’t all know about you. I give them just enough information for whatever I want them to do. If someone got them all in the same room together, there might be a problem. But that’s not gonna happen.”

“It only takes one to raise suspicion.”

Tony scowls at him. “We’re not going to be in Bermuda forever.”

“Right. Where the hell are we going, then?”

“Where do you want to go?”

Jack’s quiet.

“L.A.”

Tony looks at Jack like he’s a moron. “What’s in L.A.?”

“Kim and her family.”

“You might want to let go of that, Jack.”

There’s a flash of anger in his gut, but he knows it hurts Tony to even hear the word _family_ , so he resists. He can be charitable.

 

/

 

They spend a lazy morning together, chasing their mysterious Russian via the very spotty trail he’s left them.

They don’t bother getting dressed. Jack doesn’t care if Tony sees his scars; he doesn’t feel the need to protect him from the ugly truth, of China or otherwise. It’s nice to feel that way about someone.

He sneaks glances at Tony and wonders, what was he doing in Alaska? He can't picture him there. When he thinks about Tony, he thinks of the lazy Los Angeles sun, high in the sky. Dark button-downs. Full head of hair, Jack’s fingers twined in that hair. Soul patch. Lazy smile. He thinks of his hand on Tony’s thigh and his lip on his ear as he leans over him, looking at his screen.

Get out of the past. This is here and now. Tony alive and in his bed. Tropical paradise outside the window. Ex-KGB chasing them down. Stay in the game. Stay focused.

If Jack’s good at anything, it’s the here and now. But after all these years of fast decisions and slow, painful consequences, it’s hard for him to let go of his clinging fear. Once bitten, twice shy.

Tony’s not biting him. Tony’s just looking at him with curiosity in his dark eyes.

Then the cell phone rings.

Jack grabs it.

“Hello?”

“Who the hell is this?” says someone with a British accent.

Tony snatches the phone out of Jack’s hand. “Hey.”

“Put it on speaker,” Jack snaps.

Tony holds up a finger as he listens. Jack’s hand shoots out to take the phone back and Tony blocks him with a forearm, then hits the button.

“- him until he left the main road. Didn’t think I could get away with it after that. He turned onto Turtle Bay. You run that with what you have, you’ll find him. There’s only ‘round eight houses on that road.”

“Thanks.”

“Where’s the cash, Almeida?”

“I’ll pay you if this pans out,” Tony says, with a note of warning in his voice.

“You’re not dodging me. I know exactly where you are.”

“You’ll get what I decide to give you.”

“Don’t test me.”

“Who is this guy?” Jack mouths.

“Yeah, okay,” Tony says, and hangs up. “Um. Clive. That’s his last name or his first name. I never bothered to find out.”

“What’s his deal?”

“He was in the BAF with Emerson.”

“Not from his crew?”

“No. The crew’s gone, Jack. You, me and Renee took care of that.”

“Does he have an angle?”

“Yeah, like I said. Money.”

Tony takes the tablet in his hand and starts typing.

“Turtle Bay...” His mouth hangs open a bit as he scrolls. “Here. One house on the whole street with no available records. Like someone scrubbed the list of previous owners.”

“That’s too obvious.”

“Nah, I don’t think so. Look, they don’t know about the tech I have, or about me. They think you’re on your own, on the run, with no resources. We might be a step ahead of them for once. I can’t be sure. That’s why I need to go and feel him out. You know, I wish we had Chloe.”

Jack laughs. “Yeah, me too. You think they’re getting anything out of her?”

“No. If she does anything, it’s stick to her guns.”

They’re quiet.

“It’s her husband I’m worried about,” Tony says.

“You don’t like him.”

“No.”

“He called you a terrorist.”

“Yeah, that was what did it,” Tony says, deadpan. “Tiny shoe salesman calling me names. Really wrecked me.”

“You sure it didn’t? I saw how much it bothered you when you came back to CTU and everyone was calling you a traitor to your face.”

“I’m over all of that, Jack. What does that shit matter anymore?”

The sad thing is, Jack knows he means it.

 

/

 

 

When it gets to be late in the afternoon, they take a cab to a shady abandoned lot where there’s a black SUV waiting. They both get out. Tony slides his hand along the running board and holds up a key.

“Can I drive?”

“Yeah, why not,” says Tony, handing it to him.

“Where’d you get this?”

“Clive told me about a guy in town that sells cars to tourists on the cheap,” he says as he walks around to the passenger side. Jack gets in the driver’s seat.

“Stolen?”

“Probably,” Tony says. “It’s a seller’s market.”

“Why?”

“Only citizens can own them, legally.”

“Huh. Maybe you should have given me a guidebook for the plane ride.”

Tony smirks. “I’ll remember that next time.”

“Yeah, _next time_ ,” Jack mutters, starting the car.

 

/

They pull up about a block away.

“Is he home?”

Tony doesn’t answer, but he makes a phone call.

“Hey. Did you pick up the tail again? Ten minutes ago? Okay, great.”

He sets the phone down on the dashboard.

“Clive saw Matveyev get out of a taxi and walk into a restaurant -”

“Ten minutes ago.”

“Yeah.”

“Is he eating there, or scoping us out?”

“Don’t know.”

“So he could be back in half an hour or two hours.”

“Could be.”

Jack leans back against his seat, running his thumbs along the bottom of the steering wheel. The sun is setting. It’s beautiful.

The air inside the car is thick with something. Their usual tension, plus a little extra. It’s funny how they can be so comfortable with each other and so ill at ease at the same time.

Jack wants to reach over and slide his hand down Tony’s thigh, but he doesn't.

 

/

 

It’s forty-five minutes before a taxi pulls to a stop in front of the house.

They both sit up in their seats sharply. It’s dark out now, and Tony pulls a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment and raises them to his face.

“That our boy?”

“Yeah,” Tony murmurs. “Damn it.”

“What?”

“He’s huge.”

“You still sure you want to do this?”

“I don’t have a choice, Jack. All right, you’re going to...”

“I’ll be watching.”

“Right. Here.” He hands him a tiny comm device. Jack puts it in his ear.

Tony stuffs a gun between his waistband and lower back, draping his jacket over it. Then he gets out of the car, gently closes the door, walks a few steps away and says, “Radio check.”

“Five by five.”

“Copy.”

Tony starts walking to the door. His footfalls are soft thuds in Jack’s ears. Jack gets his gear and creeps around the front of the car, sticking to the shadows.

The adjacent house is a rambler with a convenient trellis. Matveyev’s living room is all windows. Jack had noticed this as soon as they pulled up.

He sets up on the roof, belly-down, and brings his eye to the scope. Between his rifle and his comm, he might as well be in the room.

Matveyev is plugging in his laptop.

Tony knocks.

“No going back now,” he says, his voice a soft buzz in Jack’s ear.

“Buy the ticket, take the ride,” Jack replies.

Matveyev gets up, slowly, putting his hand on his hip, where he has a pistol holstered.

Jack trains the sights on his head. As far as he can see, Matveyev looks surprised, but not nervous or concerned. Maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe not.

He opens the door, and Jack can hear inside the house now.

“Hello,” Matveyev says uncertainly.

“ _Привет_ ,” says Tony.

“You are?”

“I’m someone you want to talk to. It’s about Jack Bauer.”

Matveyev takes his hand off the butt of his gun and opens the door wider.

“Come in,” he says.

Tony steps through the doorway and is quickly frisked.

Matveyev sits down on the coffee table next to his computer, and motions for Tony to sit on the couch. He does.

“Who are you?”

“A friend of Jack’s.”

“What makes you think I’m interested in Jack Bauer?”

“I’ve heard some things.”

“Tell me who you are.”

Tony grabs Matveyev’s laptop by the top of the screen and sets it on his lap.

“Tony Almeida.”

Matveyev types. There’s silence.

“Tony Almeida is dead.”

“Nah, I don’t think so.”

“Ah. I see what happened. This is a private database. We updated your status, but whoever put the change through did it incorrectly.” He clucks his tongue. “ _дилетантский_...”

Tony sits back in his seat, getting comfortable.

“You are a colleague,” Matveyev says. “You overlapped for many years at CTU. First he disappeared, and then you disappeared. Then he disappears again.”

“So what is it you want with Jack?”

“What is _your_ stake in the situation?”

“If you need the information I think you do, we both stand to profit here.”

“I don’t see how.”

Jack’s finger slides up and down the outside of the trigger guard.

“I know where he is. You want to know where he is.”

“How do you know where he is?”

“I sent him on his way.”

“And now you... want to sell him out?”

“Exactly.”

“What’s your motive?”

“Money.”

“Mmm,” says Matveyev. “I could believe that. But I feel you’re hiding something from me.”

“I don’t have anything to hide.”

“Where is Jack Bauer?”

Tony hands over his tablet. Jack can’t see the screen from here but he knows it’s a satelite map; they put it together earlier that morning. His last known location, supposedly.

“Africa again,” Matveyev says. “Interesting.”

“He’s familiar with the area. He has contacts there.”

Matveyev taps the screen. “In Sengala.”

“Excuse me?”

“Most of his contacts are in Sengala. But he’s not.”

“No, the region’s still too unstable. He’s making his way through the neighboring countries.”

“Tell me,” says Matveyev. “You have gone to great lengths for Jack Bauer before. You helped him fake his death. Here someone has noted that you have... a unique attachment to him. As he does for you. What’s your motive here?”

Tony cocks his head. “Money.”

“I’m sure,” Matveyev says. His voice is oily.

“Jack’s never really had justice for what he’s done. Never paid for it in a meaningful way.”

He's a skilled liar.

“Bauer almost died, helping you stop this, ah, prion variant.”

“Yeah, and after that, what? Renee got an inquiry. She got fired. I got shipped. Jack got to cozy up in a hotel in New York for months and months.”

“So you are angry. You feel cheated by your government... yet again?”

“Yeah. Yet again.”

“And you are hitting Bauer the only way you know how. With betrayal. You gain his trust and sell him out.”

Tony’s quiet, another _yeah_ goes unspoken.

“You slept with him,” Matveyev says abruptly.

Jack can see Tony’s jaw tighten. His does too. This is not good.

“Excuse me?”

Matveyev shrugs. “Is suggested in the file. Unique attachment, I was being... ah... you all have a word. _эвфемизм_. Euphemism.”

“In _my_ file?”

“In his. We are very interested in Jack Bauer. We have been for years. We have all romantic relationships listed, right here. Nina Myers. Traitor. Deceased. His wife, Teri. Deceased... Claudia Salazar.”

_Clow-dee-a,_ he pronounces it.

“Deceased. You. Deceased, and then not deceased. Funny, here too. Audrey Heller. Deceased, not deceased. Kate Warner. Professor of economics. In London! She got off lightly, hm?”

Jack’s stomach tightens at that.

“Renee Walker. Deceased.”

And now he just feels sick. But his hands are steady as ever.

Tony snorts. “By your men.”

“Not mine.”

“Your countrymen.”

Matveyev snorts right back. “Russians are not so sentimental about this concept as Americans. Countrymen. We are all just men. Stop changing the subject. You have emotions toward him.”

“Not anymore.”

Tony’s voice is thick.

“You rescued him.”

“I felt obligated. He’s had my back, I had his one last time.”

“You have his back and then you stab it?”

“I needed some time to think about it. At least this way he has a fighting chance.”

“This...” Matveyev taps the tablet. “This is his last known location.”

“Yeah.”

“If we find him it’s a death sentence, you understand.”

“Maybe he’ll finally have peace,” Tony says.

It comes out so easily, so lightly. It sounds like he believes it more than anything. Like he’s rationalized himself into believing it in a way that any man betraying a good friend would have to.

_It’s for the best._ Maybe he can die now, like he’s been trying so hard to, all these years. Not honorably, the way he would have wanted, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Matveyev’s face is unfathomable. Tony’s too. He’s very good at that. Never around Jack, but Tony falls apart around Jack. And vice versa. It’s their tell. It’s what killed Emerson.

Matveyev gets up and walks out of Jack’s line of sight.

“I don’t have a visual,” he hisses into his comm.

Tony shakes his head ever so slightly.

This op goes against every instinct Jack has, and yet, it’s the right play. They had to do something, and this is the something. It’s better than hiding. Jack’s done with hiding.

For good.

Matveyev comes back with a manilla folder in his hands. Jack’s breathing has slowed to a crawl. His vision is eagle sharp.

The folder is handed to Tony, who looks through it.

“Bearer bonds?” he says, for Jack’s benefit.

“Fifteen thousand in US dollars,” Matveyev says. “I would like you to disappear now. I will take all of the credit for finding our friend Jack, and in exchange, you will walk out of here, unharmed, with cash in hand.”

“Fine by me.”

Matveyev puts a double ended USB cord into the tablet, and then his laptop. There’s a moment of silence while he transfers the file, and as soon as it’s done, Tony snatches the tablet back out of his hand.

“Have a good evening, Mr. Almeida.”

“Yeah, you too,” Tony mutters, turning around and heading for the door.

Matveyev reaches for the butt of his gun. Jack’s finger moves, hovering over the trigger, Matveyev’s head in the crosshairs of his scope.

But his hand just rests there, like a silent warning.

Jack wonders how much he knows.


	6. 6

Tony gets in the car and pulls away, alone, as Matveyev watches from the window. He parks about a block away, obscured by another house.

Jack slides off the roof with his rifle slung over his shoulder and creeps through the darkness. He gets in the passenger seat, throwing the bag into the back. Tony immediately starts driving away.

“He bugged me,” Tony says. “Don’t know when. He never touched me, I don’t think. He must have put it on me when he took the tablet.”

“So -”

“I got rid of it when I saw you walking up. But it’s good I had to wait for you. It’s better for our story that he heard some silence.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have ditched it. Could have just gone back to the hotel.”

“And left you on the roof all night when we have no clue what he’s up to? Nah. Better for him to to think I’m just paranoid.”

Tony’s quiet as he drives, Without warning he turns the wheel and pulls off the road, into the grass, and then into the forest, onto a dirt path wide enough for maybe three people to walk side by side.

The brush presses in all around them, against the windows. The inside of the car is warm, though the night is cool.

Tony moves for him and for a second Jack thinks he’s going to blow him, but no, he leans over and adjusts Jack’s seat, pushing him back and back. He climbs on top of him, his legs at awkward angles. There’s a needy expression in his dark eyes that Jack knows all too well.

No, no blow job. He wants Jack inside of him.

Jack could say no, come on, let’s get back to the hotel, but he does wants it too, and it’s obvious. His cock is hard against Tony’s thigh and Tony  is hard against his stomach and they both want each other.

Jack runs his hands up under Tony’s t-shirt.

Tony is sliding his pants off, elbowing Jack in the chest as he does. They chuckle together, releasing some tension.

Then his boxers come down to his knees, and he leans forward with his palm against the seat, supporting himself so that Jack can slide his own pants and boxers down far enough to expose his dick.

“I don’t have a condom,” Jack says. It sounds stupid out loud. Like he’s expected to bring condoms on reconnaissance missions now.

Tony all but rolls his eyes. “Christ, Jack, I don’t care,” he says, reaching behind himself with his other hand to flip open the glove compartment. He pulls out the requisite first aid kit and opens it, takes the tiny tube of Vaseline out.

Jack watches him. His mouth is dry and his chest moves slowly, up and down.

Tony jerks him until he’s hard, quickly, like it bothers him. He can take a cock in the ass or the mouth but for whatever reason, he’s never much liked touching Jack’s with his hands.

Then he squeezes some lube onto his fingers and smooths it over Jack, his slick fingers gleaming in the darkness.

Tony moves forward, closer, close enough for them to kiss, and they do. It’s filthy and sexy and sensation shoots hot and sharp through Jack’s stomach.

As Jack sucks on Tony’s lip, Tony is putting Jack’s cock inside of him, and then there’s that pressure and heat, so familiar and so wonderful.

Tony moans against Jack’s mouth. Christ, he makes the best noises. Jack’s cock twitches and he can feel Tony’s breath catch.

Jack thrusts the best he can with Tony’s weight pinning him and Tony moves away from his mouth, down to his neck, sucking on the delicate skin there and making soft throaty noises as Jack moves inside of him.

He comes too soon, tensing underneath Tony.

“Sorry.”

Tony moves back, his lips red and swollen from making a throbbing lovebite right on Jack’s throat. “S’okay.”

They kiss some more, tongues in each other’s mouths, and after a minute or two Jack feels himself getting hard again. That hasn’t happened so quickly in decades.

He’s still inside Tony, so he feels it, and draws back, his dark eyes lit up with curiosity. Seeing that pushes Jack over the edge.

“Let’s try it again,” he says, his voice even huskier than usual. “In the backseat.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, and climbs off of him awkwardly. It’s almost laughable, them maneuvering in this car, with their underwear around their knees but both their shirts still on.

Jack waits for Tony to get in the back first and then climbs over after him. Tony gets on all fours across the seats and Jack steadies himself behind him, clutching the tube of Vaseline in a sweaty palm.

All right, he can work with this.

He wishes Tony still had a headful of hair to grab onto. He wants to sink his fingers into a thatch of it, dark and soft and wavy, and hiss _you want me to fuck you? you want me to fuck the shit out of you?_ and have Tony snap, _yeah, go ahead,_ the way they used to do. When they were still young and kind of disgusted by the idea of it in a perverse, fascinated way. The first time was so intense it messed them up for days. He remembers Tony collecting himself, buttoning his shirt, sliding his shoes on. Walking out the door of his apartment acting like he wasn’t aching with every step, no eye contact, poker faced.

And then it was all Jack could think about, at home, at work, in line at the bank. Being inside of him, like being inside a woman but stranger. Darker, for him. Dirtier. Such a different connotation.

So they tried it again. _No excuses, we both liked it, let’s not lie to each other, we treat each other like shit sometimes, but we don’t lie to each other._

The second time was different, not so hurried. It felt like seeing a hidden little part of each other, taking it out into the light and dusting it off and not pronouncing it repellent, but holding up the two and making a whole out of what they didn’t even know were separate halves. _So, you too, huh?_ An understanding that had escaped them since the bribery convictions, since Tony had started looking at Jack out of the corner of his eyes.

Over the years Jack had fooled around with a few other men, anonymously, privately. When things went south with Kate he thought maybe that was his problem and he tested it out, but it never fit, it was like having your shirt on backwards. He couldn't even get hard unless he pretended they were Tony. Imagined the hair between his fingers being black curls, imagined his soft voice

Tony kneels now underneath Jack, waiting for him.

He squeezes the last of the lube onto his fingers, wringing out the tube, rubbing a liberal amount onto himself and then pushing two of those fingers into Tony without warning.

He’s relaxed, but he still lets out a soft groan. Jack wonders if you ever get over that feeling of trespass.

He replaces his fingers with his cock slowly, and then wraps his hand around Tony’s thigh, pulling him closer so he can get himself in deeper. Tony’s breath comes out in a rush.

He starts to thrust, no rhythm to it, no tenderness, just fucking, slamming into him as hard as he can without pulling his stitches, Tony making wordless noises of pain and satisfaction. Then they really get into it, see through it, leave any anxiety behind.

It feels like surfing. Like being in the barrel, not being able to hear anything but the rush of the wave, riding into it. Your heart thumping, frantic, against the walls of your chest. _Am I gonna make it through?_ He moves swifter, not so hard, but with more intensity, and Tony’s entire body shifts forward, taking Jack with him.

“Oh god, oh, Jack, Christ,” he gasps. Jack’s clawing at his back for leverage, sliding his fingers under Tony’s shirt and sinking his fingers into sweaty skin. He really wants to grab a handful of Tony’s hair, he feels cheated that he can’t anymore.

Jack leans forward, pushing himself deeper, and he must hit Tony’s sweet spot because he moans, loud and low and unexpected. Jack squeezes his eyes shut and keeps rocking into him, eliciting smaller moans, hiccupy gasps. Tony’s fingers splay across the glass of the window as he braces against it. The car is rocking. If they were on a shitty motel bed right now the mattress springs would be squealing in protest.

He reaches down, his hand against Tony’s side, and begins to jerk him off as he fucks into him. Jack’s in a haze, all feel and sound, a wind tunnel. Tony’s fingers squeaking on the glass, his soft moans. The sensitive nerves in his cock screaming greedily. His hand on Tony, who’s about to come himself, the teary dribblings of precome already all over his palm.

They’re almost there and Jack knows how hard it can be for Tony to finish with him inside, but he wants him to, so he thrusts into him as rough as he can, once, twice, three times. Tony makes a soft noise and seizes the upholstery of the seat with his hands, bracing himself as Jack squeezes his cock tight, tight, tight in his palm. Like how he’d do jerking himself off. And then he comes inside Tony for the second time that night, and that’s all Tony needs, he comes into Jack’s fingers a moment later as Jack gives a few final lackluster thrusts.

The glass has fogged up, except for the spot on the left passenger side window where Tony’s hand left a print and then a big, smeary streak.

 

/

 

It’s an awkward ride back to the hotel. Tony is silent, which could mean anything. Jack offered to drive and got a muttered _fine_ in response.

They ditch the car and rub it down. Tony gets out a blacklight and goes over the interior, the exterior, the doors, until they’re both satisfied. No prints. ( _No semen, either_ , is implied).They walk a mile back to the hotel, sticking close to the beach.

“You sure there was only one bug?”

“Yeah, I checked.”

“If not...”

“If not, it’s probably somewhere in the backseat, now,” Tony says, and laughs.

Jack laughs too. What else can they do?

 

/

 

When they get back, Jack soon falls into a fitful, disturbed sleep. He wakes up a few times feeling feverish and strange, not quite in this world and not quite out.

The third time he does it’s because his sides are hurting; he dreams that someone he can’t see is pinching him from behind and wakes up abruptly. No, it’s just his stitches, pulled a little too hard in their moorings from the rough sex, the skin around them tight and sore. He reaches under the mattress for the Vicodin and finds it missing.

He looks at Tony, who’s asleep in a bundle of sheets. He’s sleeping like the dead. No snoring, no audible breathing, his chest just rises and falls, over and over.

Jack shoves his shoulder.

He sits up, scowling. “What?”

“Where’s my Vicodin?”

Tony gets up and pads into the bathroom. He comes back with two pills and a glass of water, which Jack accepts.

“You’re hiding it from me?”

“Don’t make it a thing, Jack,” he grumbles, climbing back into his nest of sheets. “I was there for your addiction, remember?”

Anger flares in Jack’s chest, but he keeps quiet. He knows it’s the pain making him feel this way, but he’s full of old resentment, too. _There for it? You just wanted to get the job done, Tony, I was inconveniencing you, what the fuck?_ He knows that’s not fair, but it hurts. Nothing is worse for him  than feeling weak, and nothing made him feel weaker than being a slave to heroin. He remembers Tony standing over him, handing him his syringe. _Just get it over with. You can fix it later. Let’s get the Salazars. Let’s get the virus._

Jack’s head swims. He swallows the pills.


	7. 7

He’s lying in a grave. Renee is standing over him, staring at him, her hair long and loose. There’s one perfect red circle in her shirt, below her chest, above her stomach. It doesn’t bleed.

“Help me up,” he says, but he doesn’t seem to make a sound.

Renee hears him anyway. “No, I’m sorry, Jack,” she says. “You brought this on yourself.”

She hops into the grave next to him and begins filling it in near his feet. It’s so warm. He can’t move. His skin is slick with sweat.

“Help me, please.”

“I can’t. You need to be put down.”

“No, I didn’t do it.” _What didn’t he do?_ He racks his brain but his thoughts slip away like smoke. “Renee, you’ve got the wrong person.”

She keeps shoveling, until he’s in up to his chest. It’s not dirt but gravel and bluestone, tacky from a recent rain.

“No, no -”

She leans over him, pressing down on him, a syringe in her hand.

“No, no, no -”

“Jack, hold on. Hey.”

She squeezes the plunger, a few drops of some clear liquid spilling out. “It’s okay. Calm down.”

No -

He fights her, pushing her away. He doesn’t want to hurt her but she’s so heavy on his chest for some reason, pushing down on his neck and about to murder him. He scratches at her face and she makes an angry noise, spits something mean at him. Her hand cups his neck but the syringe is nowhere to be found. Where did she hide it? She’s going to kill him -

And then there’s a flash of cold against his face and he wakes up, spitting and coughing. Tony is on top of him, one hand on Jack’s chest, one hand holding the glass of water he swallowed his pills with. Now empty.

There’s an angry red claw mark across Tony’s cheek, three identical scores. They aren’t bleeding, but they look painful.

“I -” he takes a deep breath. _Getoffgetoffgetoff._ Tony must intuit this because he climbs off of Jack, sits down beside him on the bed with his legs Indian style.

“Nightmare?”

“Yeah.”

“What about?”

“Renee.” His throat tightens as he says it. His heartbeat slowly returns to normal. He wipes water off of his forehead and sits up.

Tony just nods.

“She was trying to kill me.”

“Yeah? That why you scratched me?”

“Sorry.”

“It was just a dream, Jack.”

“How’d I wake you up?”

“Uh, you were screaming _no no no_ and thrashing around...”

Tony moves closer and pushes Jack back down against the bed, sidling up close to him. He wraps an arm around Jack’s waist, holding him, and they lie there together. Jack is surprised by the intimacy of the gesture. He lies very still, like Tony is a butterfly that just landed on his hand.

“I get them too,” he whispers into Jack’s shoulder. “Especially after...” he swallows. There’s no follow-up. Jack gets the feeling he was going to say something about Michelle and he just couldn’t, not without losing his composure.

“What do you do?”

“Have a beer and go back to sleep.”

Jack nods, his chin making a lazy up-and-down motion against Tony’s forehead. They doze off together, in the same position, each willing the other not to move or leave.

 

/

 

Jack doesn’t wake again until the morning, and when he does it’s for no reason in particular.

He and Tony started spooning at some point in their sleep. Tony’s arm is wrapped around his waist, and he’s breathing on the back of Jack’s neck.

Jack would find it funny if it weren’t so comfortable. He relaxes for a moment, letting himself enjoy it, letting himself be at ease. Tony is so peaceful behind him, just a warm, quiet presence.

Finally he slips out of his grasp and walks into the bathroom, splashing water on his face.

It’s the warmest it’s been since they got here. Jack puts on the weather, cleans up and gets dressed. He sits on the edge of the bed and gives his attention to the muted TV. Highs of 80 degrees today.

He reaches behind himself and pats Tony on the foot. There’s a stirring under the covers.

“Yeah?” he says sleepily.

“What’s the plan?” Jack asks.

“Huh?”

“You want to check up on Matveyev?” Jack turns around.

“He hasn’t left yet,” Tony mumbles, taking the tablet off the bedside table. “We’ll know when he does.”

“So we’re waiting again.”

Tony nods twice and gets up. Jack pretends not to notice him wincing as he walks into the bathroom.

Jack gets up and starts putting things away, cleaning mindlessly. He’s not a neat freak but clutter makes it hard for him to think, and he needs to think now, long-term. If they got rid of Matveyev for good, he has a whole life ahead of him to plan. A whole life of running and hiding.

No one would believe it if he and Tony faked their deaths again, would they? It’s possible Tony doesn’t even have to fake his, maybe he could just disappear without an explanation. As terrible as it sounds, who’d notice he was gone? He hasn’t mentioned a girlfriend, although it’s possible he had someone keeping his bed warm up in Alaska.

In the bathroom the sink starts running.

 

/

 

An hour or two later they’re taking a cab back to Matveyev’s house.

While Tony was cleaning up, his tablet had started beeping. Jack took a look and found that Matveyev had booked an 9 AM flight back to Moscow.

“Here’s fine,” Tony says to the cab driver, three houses down from their target. “Wait for us,” he says, handing him a few bills.

Tony gets out first, as they had planned, and strolls up to the house, casing it out. After a few minutes he waves at Jack to come over.

Jack gets out. He’s in a cap and sunglasses again, just in case.

When he catches up, Tony knocks on the door with one hand and stashes something in his pocket with the other. “Three unknowns inside. Not picking up on any active transmissions, but there could be some inactive bugs…”

He knocks on the door again. They hear footsteps.

“Don’t get it, Felix!” someone yells from inside.

“Might be Girl Scouts! I want cookies!”

“There’s no Girl Scouts in Bermuda, dumbass!”

The door opens and a small guy appears. Must be Felix.

Jack takes his sunglasses off. Matveyev isn’t here.

“You are some ugly-ass Girl Scouts,” he says.

Tony gets his boot in the door before Felix can close it on them. “We need to ask you some questions.”

“Yeah? Then get a warrant and come back.”

“I need a warrant to ask somebody some questions?”

“You’re gonna need one if you want to keep your foot in my doorjamb.”

“It’s not your doorjamb,” Tony drawls.

That gets Felix nervous. “And how did you come to that conclusion, _cabrón_?”

“Let us in and we’ll talk, bajo.”

“Oh, _pocho_ took Spanish 101, huh? I’m not letting you any -”

Tony barges in past him. Jack follows, smiling apologetically, playing good cop. The guys in the kitchen protest from their poker table.

“I’m working on it,” Felix calls to them.

Tony starts sniffing around, checking the outlets, looking for bugs.

“You Feds?”

This surprises Jack, who turns around, brushing his hand against the pistol inside his waistband.

“I asked you a question,” Felix says. “Cops don’t act like this. You a Fed?”

Tony snorts. “No.”

“Really?”

Neither of them respond.

“If you’re not cops or Feds, then what do you want?”

“You squatting?” Tony says, straightening up, his hands on his hips.

“No, I’m not squatting, _cabrón._ ”

“Call me that one more time.”

Felix rolls his eyes. Tony gives Jack a quick glance. _Take over._ Jack’s always been better at getting information out of people.

“If you’re not squatting, how’d you get here so fast?” Jack says quietly. “Where’s the Russian guy?”

Felix looks at him; his mouth forms a small O. “You’re here about the Russian, ah. I get it. No, he came up to me and my crew this morning in a parking lot. We were talking about where we were gonna have a deal go down. He said you can use my place, I’m leaving the country.”

“On what condition?”

“Just that we made it look lived-in for a few days. It was kind of weird. He said, oh, just put the lights on, don’t answer the door for people, stuff like that.”

“He tell you anyone specific to not answer the door for?” Jack says.

“Yeah, don’t let two asshole Feds in,” Felix says drily. “Nah, man, he didn’t say anything like that.”

“Anything else you remember?”

“He looked real jittery. Like someone was watching him. Left in a hurry. I don’t know. Is that all?”

Jack looks at Tony, who mouths _no bugs_.

“Yeah, that’s all.”

 


	8. 8

“There’s something off here,” Jack says once they’re back in the taxi.

Tony is quiet, like he’s thinking.

“What does he have to be paranoid about? Why would he want us to think he hasn’t left yet? Why would he go straight back to Moscow?”

Tony huffs.

“What?”

“I don’t know anything more than you do, remember?”

“You’re the one tracking him.”

“You can look at my files anytime you want, Jack.”

“You want me to take you back to the hotel?” the driver calls over his shoulder.

“No,” Tony says, and gives him the name of another hotel. They’d planned this before they knew Matveyev was leaving, and they figured they’d go through with it anyway. Jack had snuck out through the pool and hopped the fence while Tony checked out, alone, in case anyone asked the desk clerk. He would check into the new hotel alone as well, and Jack would sneak in later.

“It’ll have to be a single,” Tony had said.

“We’ve been sleeping in the same bed anyway,” Jack said frankly, which Tony squinted in response to for some reason. Jack had just squinted back at him.

So Tony gets there and checks in while he loiters outside, watching people go by.  

 

907-880-3410: room 521

212-779-9462: coming up. dont be in the hallway

907-880-3410: copy

 

Jack waits for the desk clerk to turn his back and then he walks in, looking purposeful, jingling his keys, and gets in the elevator.

He knocks when he gets to their room and Tony opens the door immediately, then closes it as soon as he’s inside.

“I can’t get ahold of West.”

Jack pulls his sweat-stained shirt off and digs a clean one out of the duffel. “Didn’t know you were in touch. I thought he was going to sell us out.”

“He was jerking your chain, Jack, he hates the FBI than he hates me.”

“And he hated Emerson more than he hates you for killing Emerson?”

“That’s up for debate.”

“You and Emerson, uh,” Jack says, feeling awkward in the extreme for even bringing it up. “Was it -”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Jesus, Jack.”

“I have to ask.”

“You have to, huh? You know, I would have said something.”

“Did he ever -”

“Look, I don’t know, he’s British, all right? He could have been gay or he could have just been... whatever. He never talked about women _or_ men. Or much of anything. It was always about his crew, not him.”

“He seemed attached to you.”

“I don’t know. He could have been attracted to me, but he’d never say anything, that wasn’t his style. He always said, _you’re like a brother to me,_ nothing weird about it, he just liked me.”

“And...”

“And vice versa,” Tony snaps. “Go fish, Jack.”

“I’m just trying to put it together in my head.”

Tony’s plugging things into the wall outlet, chargers mostly, and he says something so quiet Jack doesn’t catch it.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Tony gets up. By his body language Jack can tell that conversation has ended, although the weight of _was Emerson fucking you?_ still hang heavy in the air between them.

“I wasn’t in touch with West, but I was tracking him. He just went dark.”

“Could he have found out you were?”

“I doubt it. It was an unsigned rootkit, it could have come from anybody. Look... it’s probably nothing.”

“Okay. Any hot water left?”

“Yeah.”

Jack nods and walks into the bathroom.

 

/

 

When he gets out of the shower Tony is watching baseball, which he changes to CNN when he hears Jack. The broadcast of Taylor’s impeachment trial is ongoing.

Jack sits on the bed. He’s wearing only boxers; it’s too balmy for clothes. This room has a balcony too and the door’s open. A weak breeze flutters the curtains.

He lies down on his stomach, with his arms folded underneath him. His index finger hovers less than an inch above Tony’s shoulder. Jack hears his breath hitch.

“Each member may be permitted to place an opening statement into the record,” drones a stiff in a suit from the floor of the Senate. “After the two opening statements – my own and the ranking member's – the chair intends to recognize the witness Tim Woods, Secretary of Homeland Security.”

“Surreal,” Jack says, his mouth very close to Tony’s ear.

“Is it?” Tony says throatily.

“Lot of Presidents we’ve had in the last ten years.”

“I gotta be honest with you, Jack, I haven’t really been paying attention lately.”

Jack mouths at his ear, dropping kisses along his jaw. Tony’s hand comes up and he cups Jack’s face with it.

He starts to suck at Tony’s throat.

“They going to get rid of Taylor?”

“She’s resigning either way,” Jack murmurs into his neck. He can see Tony’s hard-on through his jeans, and Tony is squirming underneath him. He knows he’s still a little mad about their talk earlier, but he’ll get over it. They never stay angry for too long.

“You still sore?”

That gets him. His back arches against the side of the bed and he grabs a handful of Jack’s hair.

“You’re a sick fuck, you know that?” he says in that soft voice of his, and then he climbs up on the bed next to Jack and leans back against the pillows.

Jack comes up over him, hands on either side of his waist, and they just look at each other, having a silent conversation.

He palms Tony through his jeans, gently, and one thing leads to another and then he’s pulling his cock out through the slit in his boxers and going down on him.

Jack doesn’t really like having a dick in his mouth. What he does enjoy, though, is Tony writhing above him, grabbing at him, humping his face and moaning - so he’ll suffer through the reality of a cock for the more abstract pleasure of Tony being helpless and desperate and needing him so bad it hurts.

Tony climaxes fast. Jack spits the come out into a tissue immediately. He doesn’t mind the taste so much, but the texture is a nightmare.

They lie there together, sticky with sweat, too hot to move.

“I miss your hair,” Jack says, staring at the ceiling.

Tony heaves a sigh. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

 

/

 

 

They order room service and watch old movies, flipping back to the news at commercials to stay updated. There still isn’t much about Jack getting out there. Maybe there’s a media blackout while they try to find him before the Russians do, or maybe they’re just plain embarrassed that he escaped right out from under their noses.

They don’t talk. They don’t really need to. They’re not mad at each other and there’s nothing tactical to discuss, and when that happens they tend to lapse into comfortable silence.

Then they climb into bed together, not cuddling, just lying next to each other. It’s too hot to be close. Tony drops off like a lead brick but Jack takes longer, fidgeting and staring at the ceiling.

He turns his head and looks over at Tony, who’s on his side, turned away from him. Muscles settled under his smooth skin.

He reaches out and runs his hand along the length of his body, as if to make sure he’s real, and then he falls back to sleep.

 

/

 

He wakes up to a scraping noise.

At first it doesn’t register as anything, and then he hears it again, closer.

Jack elbows Tony, hard. He wakes up immediately, jerking into a sitting position.

“What?” His pupils are huge in the dark.

There’s another scrape, and then a footstep. On their balcony.

Tony leans out of bed to grab the duffel and tugs it toward himself with one finger. Jack can hear the door being jimmied and he stands up. Tony’s beside him in a second with a pistol in his hands.

The door opens and a small guy with the mangled face of a boxer walks in. He's pointing a gun at them.

“Clive?” Tony says.

“Yeah, in the flesh,” Clive responds. “Where’s me fucking money, Almeida?”

“What money?”

“You promised cash for information. I got you information. The Russian’s gone.”

“How’d you find us?”

There’s a weird quality to Tony’s voice that Jack can’t place at first, in his just-woken-up haze. And then he realizes it’s that he’s lying. Either that or putting up some kind of front like he did to Matveyev.

“Vic Mendez,” Clive snaps. “How many times you gonna trot out that alias, huh?”

Tony nods, slowly.

Jack, who’s had enough of being out of the loop, rocks forward on his heels and snatches the gun right out of Clive’s hands, turning it on him. “What’s up with this guy, Tony?” he snaps.

Clive kneels onto the hotel room floor with an _oh shit_ look on his face. “Look, I don’t want any trouble. I just had the gun on account of I figured you might shoot me as I was comin’ up.”

“Jack, can you get the bearer bonds for me?” Tony says, cocking his own pistol and aiming it at Clive.

Jack turns slowly, with a sour tilt to his mouth so Tony knows he’s not happy being kept in the dark, and digs the bonds out of the duffel, all fifteen thousand, still wrapped around the middle.

He hands them to Clive.

“Fifteen thousand dollars,” he says. “That enough?”

“That about does it, indeed.”

Tony lowers his pistol.

“Hope you don’t mind if we keep your gun,” Jack says.

“It’s all yours, mate,” Clive says, stashing the bonds in the bag over his shoulder. “Plenty more where that came from. Have a nice night, boys,” he adds, and walks right out the door to their room and into the hotel’s hallway like he owns the place.

“What the hell was that?” Jack snarls.

“What was what?”

“I know there’s no way you’d be stupid enough to let yourself get tracked down on account of an alias someone already knows about, much less someone untrustworthy, much less someone on the island who knows your MO. Unless you _wanted_ to get tracked down.”

Tony’s quiet for a moment, then:

“The bonds were counterfeit.”

That throws him. “What?”

“Counterfeit. I didn’t notice it at first. But then I took a second look. And the thing is, Jack, it was a sloppy job.”

“So Matveyev ripped you off and figured he’d be gone before you noticed?”

“We gotta assume he’s with the Russians on this one.”

“Then...”

_Oh, shit._

“He never believed you in the first place. He...” Jack sighs. “Damn it, Tony!”

Tony just looks at him, scowling slightly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I knew Clive would come to get paid and we could pawn them off on him. But I didn’t want you in on it until then.”

“Why not? Like I’m a bad liar?”

“Jack, you’re a great liar. But I needed you to be mad. Like you didn’t know what was going on and you were pissed about it. That’s what’s believable to Clive, because he never liked me for that exact reason, I was too smooth, he said. And you’re too smooth when you’re undercover. You have an answer for everything and nothing throws you. That’s your tell. I needed you angry and confused. Because you can bet he’s going to get picked up for those, soon, and he’s going to tell them what happened here tonight.”

Jack sighs again, this time more with relief. “I knew you were hiding something. I was stupid not to press you. You lied to my face, Tony.”

Tony just looks at him. He seems... sad. Jack can’t make sense of that.

“He’s going to tell them I never left Bermuda,” says Jack.

“It’ll buy us some time.”

“Some. So we need to leave the hotel.”

“We need to leave the island.”

 

/

 

They need the car back. Tony calls the guy who he got it from in the first place, and promises him five thousand wired to his account by the close of business today. So, okay, fine, the car will be in a parking lot, waiting for them and stocked with guns.

Then he calls West and puts him on speaker.

“Hey. We need off the island.”

West is cooperative, which Jack finds strange. He says there’s no way they’ll get a plane out, but he knows a guy who owns a boat, and can take them wherever they want.

At this, Tony puts the phone against his chest and looks to Jack.

Jack thinks about it. “Let’s just get into international waters first,” he says. He’ll have to get his hands on a list of countries without extradition treaties, cross-reference them with governments that have no stake in the brewing conflict between Russia and the US.

“We’ll let him know,” Tony says into the phone. When he hangs up he says, “I didn’t like that.”

“Neither did I.”

Tony sighs. “You get the feeling there’s something we’re not in on?”

“I don’t know. You lying to me doesn’t help.”

“Jack, I lied to you to protect us.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

Tony stiffens.

“You know how much I hate it,” Jack says.

“You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me.”

“No, you know what, Tony? You’re right. I wouldn’t. I’d be somewhere I chose to be, in less shit than I am right now.”

“All right, fine. You want out? You want to go our separate ways? Get out of my hotel room.”

“I don’t want out, and I’m not going anywhere. You just have a way of overcomplicating things.”

Tony snorts. “And you don’t?”

They look at each other.

“Let’s get going,” says Jack.

 

/

 

They pull up to the boatyard in pitch black night. Jack shines a flashlight out the window. The gate is deadbolted.

Tony moves to turns the car off, then freezes. “You hear something?”

He does. It’s a rustling noise. He swings his head toward his passenger side window.

Men in dark clothing rush the car on both sides. Jack counts about nine before Tony slams into reverse, tires squealing.

“Wait -” he says, catching headlights in the rearview mirror.

It’s too late, they’re already being rear-ended, and as he’s thrown forward he gets hit in the face with the airbag.

It gets him right in the forehead, opening a gash, and blood streams into his eyes. “Tony,” he says desperately, grabbing for him and swiping at his eye with the sleeve of his other arm.

“There’s a gun in the glove compartment,” Tony says. The words swim in his ears; his brain took a good knock against the front of his head just now. “Jack, grab the gun -”

His hand is on the dashboard when he hears Tony’s door open, and then his is open too, and he’s being dragged out. He struggles violently, slicing someone’s nostril open with his fingernail and kicking another guy right in the jaw, hard enough to do some serious damage. He hears a shriek of pain, but they keep dragging him. There’s too many. He blinks the blood away. It stings.

“Tony,” he repeats, yelling, frantic.

“I’m here -”

Jack manages to twist his arm away from one of them, who smacks him across the face and presses a needle into his bicep.

Before he fades to black he hears someone with a Russian accent saying, “Grab that duffel.”


	9. 9

When he comes to, the first thing he feels is a cold pressure on his forehead. He jolts forward. Someone puts a hand on his shoulder and shushes him. His eyesight clears, slowly. He’s still groggy and confused.

Tony is kneeling over him with a wet washcloth. “C’mere.”

He moves closer and Tony goes back to wiping his bloody mess of a forehead with the cloth. He looks around out of the corner of his eye. They’re in a big, dark space. The floor, walls and ceiling are all rusted the same color.

“We’re on a merchant ship,” Tony says. “I’m gonna guess decommissioned.”

“We’re at sea?”

“Yeah.”

Jack takes a moment to process that.

“Gave us a toilet,” he mutters, gesturing at a hole in the floor. “Nice of them. Are we on our way to Russia?”

Tony shrugs.

“Escape plan?”

“There was some scrap metal in the corner.”

Jack nods. “We could make shivs. How long was I out?”

“I don’t know. I just came to about an hour ago. I think you might be concussed, though. Lie back down.”

He’s expecting his head to hit the floor, so he does so gingerly, but it meets Tony’s folded-up jacket instead.

“Thanks,” he says softly. “Have they been in yet?”

“One came to drop off food.” Tony inclines his head toward a plastic bag on the floor with a Pringles container poking out the top. “He kept a gun on me the whole time.”

“Say anything?”

Tony shakes his head. “‘Don’t move’ was all.”

“Russian?”

“Yeah.”

 

/

 

They sleep in shifts that night and spend the next day figuring out the patterns of the guards. They took Jack’s watch, but Tony’s was hidden under the cuff of his jacket and was still on his wrist when he woke. Once an hour someone pokes their head in the door and gives the room a cursory glance. There are four of them on duty; they’re all swarthy, pinch-faced men with the distinct look of a mercenary to them. By 4:15, they settle on the youngest one, who’s small and submissive toward the others.

He’s not due for another check-in until 6, so they use that time to make their shivs. Only two of the scraps are the right size and shape, and it’s laborious, frustrating work.

“You do this in prison?” Jack murmurs to Tony, who seems to be having better luck.

Tony scoffs.

“Is that a no?”

“I never got the chance.”

When they’re finished, he gets into position right by the door, so he can grab the kid and get him in a chokehold before he has time to yell out. Tony hovers by the wall in the shadows.

“Two minutes,” Tony whispers some time later.

“Copy.”

Those minutes pass slowly, but his footsteps come right on schedule.

When he opens the door he stays half a step in the hallway. Jack inches closer silently.

“Hello?” the kid calls. He steps forward slightly. Jack leaps behind him and wraps his arms around his throat, pulling up. The kid struggles, clawing at his hands, making soft, choked noises.

“Don’t fight it,” Jack whispers, moving his hand so that his shiv is pressed against his neck. The kid goes limp in his arms, then loses consciousness a moment later.

He drags him over to Tony, who takes him in his arms and holds his wrists behind him. Jack takes the wet washcloth and pats his face with it. Having him under the light like this, Jack realizes he can’t be any more than seventeen, and he feels a pang of guilt.

He comes to, gasping, twisting his shoulder to get his hand free. Tony holds him tight.

“Ты разговариваешь по-Английский?” Jack asks.

“ _Da, da_.”

“Okay. What’s your name?” Jack says, in his most gentle voice.

“Nikolai.”

“Nikolai, where is this boat going?”

He hesitates.

Tony pushes him forward and kneels on his hands, pinning them into the floor. Nikolai lows in pain. Tony wraps his now free hands around his neck, pressing the shiv against his throat.

“Croatia,” he whispers.

“Great..."

“We knew they were getting us to Russia one way or another, Jack.”

Jack turns his attention back to Nikolai. “Why are we going to Croatia specifically? Do you know?”

Nikolai just looks at him.

“I need you to be honest with me. I’m a federal agent -”

Tony cuts his eyes at Jack, who ignores him.

“- I’m being held illegally by whoever is on this boat. I can give you the benefit of the doubt, if you help us. Who’s paying you?”

“No payment,” he murmurs. “I am getting time off a sentence.”

“Son of a bitch,” Jack mutters. “So it’s their government. The same government that murdered Renee, Hassan, and tried to murder me, where do they get off? Who’s going to sanction this?”

Tony shakes his head. “I don’t think they care anymore.”

“You killed Mikhail Novakovich,” says Nikolai.

“He ordered the slaughter of innocent people.”

“He did what _your_ government asked...”

“Is that what they told you? It’s a lie. Logan didn’t have author...” he trails off, too disgusted to lie on Taylor’s behalf. “Anyway, I’m not my government.”

“You said you are a federal agent,” Nikolai says.

“I’m retired. I did what I did because... look, it’s complicated. How far away are we from Croatia?”

More silence.

“Nikolai...” Jack says, in a soothing tone, as Tony digs the shiv into his neck.

“Who is this man?” he asks. His voice is high with panic, his face ashen.

“I’m no one,” Tony says. “Answer Jack’s question.”

“Two days. I am supposed to bring you sponge bath later tonight.”

“Who told you to do that?”

“A man. A man on the boat.”

“You know his name?”

“I don’t know many names. But I do what they tell me.”

“What do they tell you?”

“Take shifts, watch you. You are a very dangerous man.”

“What else?”

“I overhear things.”

“What things?”

He hesitates again. Tony digs into his neck enough to draw a small, slow trickle of blood. Nikolai gasps.

“They will kill your friend when they get to the dock,” he says, so fast Jack almost doesn’t understand him. “They don’t want to do it on the boat because they don’t want to make you mad and then be stuck here with you. They are very afraid of you. They say, shoot the spare, and they will take you to Moscow, on chopper bird, and have a trial, and then kill you.”

Tony looks up at Jack from underneath his eyelashes. It’s not a happy look.

“What’s your government like right now?”

“America keeps asking for Suvarov. Russians - we don’t know where he is. The people are very angry. They want to kill Suvarov and you too. They feel betrayed.”

“Why?”

“Because the world hates Russia and now they hate us more. They think all we want is war, and to destroy America, and Suvarov has… he gives more reason.”

“What about me? Why do they need me? Why not let my government get rid of me?”

“Because they think you took it into your own hand. You did their job and killed their countrymen. You should have let them stand trial. You took care of them, so they will take care of you.”

“Anything else?”

“One more thing. I hear a man speak English on this boat. He is in the bunk next to me. No one else speaks in English. He speaks English on the phone when he thinks I am asleep, at night, quiet. He gets up and paces, on his phone.”

“What does he say?”

“I can’t hear. He says many things and he says them all very fast. He sounds scared. He says a name.”

“What name?”

“It sound like Mary. _Mary, Mary,_ he says, _I can’t do this anymore. I am scared._ ”

“American girlfriend?” Tony mouths. Jack nods. “Maybe.” He turns back to Nikolai. “What does he look like?”

“Like all of them. Tall. Dark hair. Angry face. He has a mustache. Thin mustache.”

“Okay. One more question. Have you ever heard the name Christof Matveyev?”

“No.”

“No one on this boat said that name?”

“No.”

“Jack, it’s been four minutes, we gotta let him go.”

Jack nods and Tony turns him loose. Nikolai shakes his fingers in pain and staggers backward away from them, his eyes flashing in fear.

“Wonder if he’ll say anything,” Jack says when the door shuts behind him.

“He’d have to admit what he told us.”

“We need a plan.”

Tony nods.

 

/

 

They talk for hours about possible escape plans. They can’t do anything until they’re on the ground in Croatia, but they can guess at what kind of manpower they’re up against. Tony makes scratches with his shiv in the rusted floor for every individual they can remember when they were dragged out of their car, and then the four guards separately, although, Jack says, there’s likely an overlap.

So Tony circles the four tally and puts a question mark next to it. In total, 10.

“What about the guy who drove into us?” Jack says, after a moment.

“Hey, uh,” Tony said. “Didn’t you say you kicked one in the jaw? None of them have bruised faces.”

“So seven at the least.”

“Plus other crew.”

“Yeah.”

Tony stretches.

There’s a creak at the door and one of the guard comes in. He’s sallow in the low light, and he has a small mustache, like Nikolai described his bunkmate as having. Jack squints at him.

He looks back, in a significant way, then sets down a bucket with soapy water and a sponge.

“Где Николай?” Jack asks.

The man stares at him for a moment. “Они наказать его,” he says, and retreats back into the shadowy hallway.

Jack gets lost in thought for a moment. While he’s thinking, Tony is stripping down to his boxers. Soon those come off too. Jack turns his head in mock politeness. Tony snorts.

“Same guy the kid described, I think.”

“Could be,” says Tony.

“He looked at me like he knew something.”

Tony makes a noncommittal noise.

“Look, I’m just getting the feeling there’s something going on I don’t know about.”

“Well, you know everything I know.”

Jack swings around and they lock eyes. Tony seems to shrink from him a little.

“You said that before.”

“I know, Jack, I know. But it’s the truth now. You think if I had something to do with this I’d be standing here taking a sponge bath, freezing my ass off?”

Jack doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of laughing, so he turns again.

 

/

 

That night they’re trading shifts and Jack is about to drift off when Tony says softly, “You still awake?”

He considers not answering, but after a moment, he says “Yeah.”

Tony doesn’t respond to that for a moment, then abruptly asks him, “So, you did sleep with Nina, right?”

Jack feels hurtled back in time. “Huh?”

“Did you.” He doesn’t say it like a question, there’s no uptick in tone at the end, just a corner of the flat expanse of his insecurities laid at Jack’s feet in two words. _Did you._

“Yeah,” Jack says again, caught off guard.

Silence, and then: “When?”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t know. I just want to know.” He clears his throat. “I think I knew already, but...”

“It wasn’t while you two were together, don’t worry.”

Tony laughs mirthlessly. “I’m not worried about that, Jack.”

Jack drums his fingers on the floor.

“It was after I stopped seeing you, before Teri and I got back together.”

Tony’s quiet again.

“She asked me once what we did together.”

“What did you say?” Jack says, hating himself for wanting to know.

“I told her to shut up. She laughed. How was it?”

“You all right, Tony?”

“I’m fine, Jack. Was it good?”

“It was... why are you making me talk about _Nina_? Christ...”

He sighs. “I think we’re gonna die soon and there’s just some things I’ve been wanting to clear up. You ever...”

He trails off.

“Did I ever what?”

“Think about me...”

He clears his throat again.

“Is this about what happened that one night, when I was high? Because I was _high_ , Tony. If you’re asking me if I ever thought we’d be back here again, the answer is no.”

Tony nods. “All right.”

Jack turns back over and forces himself to go to sleep.

 

/

 

When they dock it’s only a little more than a day later. Twenty nine hours, to be exact, and they wait a few hours after that for someone to fetch them. There’s lots of shouting, banging and thumping from topside, which makes Jack think they’re being transported along with drugs.

Tony seems antsy. For the umpteenth time, they discuss their plan for getting away, and when they hear footsteps, Jack slides his shiv into his mouth, between his teeth and gums. He’s careful not to prick himself, and makes a mental note to get a tetanus shot when he gets the chance.

If he ever does.

Six men walk in. He guesses it’s the same six that dragged them out of their car.

Three to each. The same guy who brought the sponge bath frisks Jack, running his hands all over him in a brief and sloppy way. Jack squints at him. He could have tucked the shiv under his waistband and gotten away with it.

“Come on,” he says, in clear English. The other two grab him by the arms and start marching up updeck, with Mustache bringing up the rear. He assumes the same is going on with Tony behind him.

When they break the surface Jack staggers a little. Days and days without sunlight have left him pretty disoriented.

Mustache kicks him in the calf.

“Walk.”

On the dock itself, there’s a harsh wind blowing. Jack counts off the guys, the ones milling around stacking boxes plus the ones escorting them, and flashes a quick hand signal to Tony behind him. _Eighteen._

“Wait,” Mustache says, and shouts in Russian to a guy still on the ship. They have a conversation so quick and low Jack can’t follow it, and then Mustache turns to one of the guys with the boxes -

In that moment while he’s distracted, Jack twists his left arm just so. The Russian holding him on that side shrieks as his wrist crunches sickeningly. He hears a thump and a groan behind him as Tony executes his part of the plan, and he leans forward and spits his shiv into his hand, wheels around, slits the other Russian’s throat, then tosses the shiv to Tony. As it leaves his hand he’s already ducking down to take the gun of the guy he just downed.

It all happens in a matter of seconds and then the other four have dropped, Mustache is nowhere to be seen, and they’re running and ducking gunfire.

Jack spots a semi-circle of jersey walls stacked two high up against the side of a building and makes a quick hand signal to Tony, who he can hear behind him, breathing heavily. They slide into cover and Jack reloads with ammo he grabbed out of the dead Russian’s pocket.

When he looks up he realizes two things; one, that Tony’s hand is pressed to his side and bloody, and two, he can hear a helicopter.

“No no no,” Jack mutters, sitting forward and pulling Tony to him.

“Jack -”

He’s shot. Not bad. It’s clean; through and through. But he won’t get very far like this. He’s already bleeding badly.

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Look -”

“Where am I gonna go, Tony? Where the fuck am I going to go?”

“Get back to America, make a deal,” Tony says softly.

Jack’s breath is catching in his throat.

“Not again. Don’t do this to me again.”

“It’s okay, Jack.”

“No. No. Stay with me.”

“I can’t.”

Bullets are ricocheting off the Jersey walls. Jack’s grip on his gun is limp, his palms are clammy. He pulls Tony to him, holds him, and presses his free hand to the wound.

The helicopter he heard is landing. It must be Russian backup. Jack feels a calm settle over him; the calm of impending death.

“I won’t make it out of here anyway. No, look, I - there’s some things I wanted to say to you too.” Tears are gathering in Jack’s eyes but he clears his throat and pushes them back. He needs to get through this. Tony is looking up at him with a calm that makes Jack’s heart clench.

He can’t let him die like this. Die for nothing, like Teri did, like Renee did. Die for being at the wrong place at the wrong time and caught in the crossfire of Jack's miserable life.

“I’m sorry that I’m the reason Michelle died,” he says, and then the tears spill over. One drops onto Tony’s shirt.

“Don’t -”

“I am -”

“Don’t say that to me,” Tony hisses, “you don’t get to say that to me.” There’s an angry flush high in his cheeks. “She died doing what she loved. She died going to protect her country. Don’t take that away from her. Don’t take it away from me either. Not everything is your fault.”

“I -” Jack’s voice disappears. He swallows. There’s more gunfire, shouting. Someone’s calling out in English, but the significance is lost on him in this moment. “I care about you,” he chokes out. “More than you know.”

Tony smiles wanly at that, an echo of what he himself said to Jack all those years ago.

“We’re fucked,” Jack says, and a feeling of relief surges through him. Tony’s blood is hot against his hand, and his eyes are closing, he’s fading.

“ _Jack!_ ” someone yells from behind him.

It’s a familiar voice, but -

“Jack!”

And then someone is grabbing him by the back of the shirt and dragging him upward and he’s fighting like crazy, can’t he have this one thing, can’t he die with Tony, can’t they die together -

The person swings him around and grabs him by the shoulders.

It’s Larry Moss.

Jack breathes out and then on instinct tries to duck away, out of his grip, but someone behind him puts their hand on his back.

“It’s okay, Bauer,” says Larry. “I’m not here to arrest you.” He glances over Jack’s shoulder and calls for a medic. Jack hears footfalls behind him, closer and closer until he looks around and a group of guys is ducking into the little semi-circle and rousing Tony, pulling him onto a stretcher.

“He’s allergic to penicillin,” Jack says numbly.

“Hear him?” Larry calls to the guys.

“Copy that,” one of them replies.

Jack feels like the ground has been pulled out from underneath him. “What’s going on, Larry?”

Larry sighs and starts to shake his head.

“Talk to me, damnit -”

“Jack, come on. Come sit with me in the helicopter. I’ll explain everything.”

The guy who had put his hand on Jack’s back, some stiff in an FBI jacket, beckons him with his hand. “This way, Mr. Bauer.”

He follows. What else is there to do? In front of him, Tony is being wheeled away, an oxygen mask over his face.


	10. 10

“Is Tony gonna be all right?”

“He should be fine,” says Larry. “We’ll finish fixing him up back in America. In the meantime, they’ve stabilized him. He’s not bleeding anymore. No significant internal damage. It’s way too risky to stay here any longer.”

“Yeah, can you explain that? Can you explain most of what the hell is going on here right now? Where’s my daughter?”

“Jack, you’re going to have to stop throwing questions at me and give me a chance to answer them. Do you trust me?”

Larry fixes him with a plaintive look.

Jack heaves a sigh. “Yes,” he says, and he didn’t realize how true that is until he said it out loud.

“Kim and her family are safe. They’re in a safehouse in the suburbs of D.C. under constant guard. Very few people know their location. Very few people know about this mission to extract you. We learned our lesson.”

“Does Hayworth know?”

Larry just looks at him like he’s stupid. “He authorized this. He’s the President now, Jack.”

“Where’s Chloe? How did you know where I’d be? Why aren’t you arresting me?”

He can’t get out the questions as fast as they occur to him. He feels a rush of dizziness and he clutches at the netting next to him.

“Chloe’s at the FBI under lockdown. She’s fine. We’ve had moles on you since we found out where you were - when Mark West contacted us.”

“Why didn’t you grab me then? You knew where I was.”

“Truth be told, Jack, we didn’t. We put out feelers. Matveyev -”

“One of yours?”

“Yes. Yes, he was. Double agent, that is.”

There’s a long silence.

“Jack... I’m sorry about Renee,” Larry says uncomfortably.

He nods. “Me too.”

“She was an incredible woman.”

“You shouldn’t have fired her.”

“After what she did with you in the field, I didn’t exactly have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

Larry sighs. “Do you want to hear the rest of it?”

Jack nods yes.

“Taylor wasn’t thinking straight when she told you to run. We didn’t want to kill you, Jack, or even necessarily imprison you, we were just trying to sort out what the hell had gone on that day. You made it a lot worse when you ran.”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“Well, not disappear with a known terrorist.”

His temper flares, but he pushes through it.

“Was one of yours on the boat too?”

“Huh?”

“Russian. Little mustache. Tall.”

Larry nods slowly. “Yeah.”

_Larry._ He’d been saying Larry on the phone, not Mary.

“Hayworth wants to clean this up the best he can. We have scapegoats already, and handily, they’re mostly dead. Public sympathy is more with you than against you. And, to be honest, you’re more useful to us alive and cooperative than dead or in prison.”

Jack feels very tired all of a sudden.

“Why did you let it get this far? Why didn’t you interrupt them at the docks in Bermuda?”

“Too dangerous. We knew you’d have a better chance getting away at this dock, and we helped you along the way...”

The scrap metal. He’s starting to piece it all together now.

“We had snipers watching, and when it seemed like a good moment, we jumped in. We confiscated the drug shipments as well, so it looks like a deal gone bad. As far as the Russian government is concerned, you and Tony took advantage of a bad situation to get away. We weren’t involved at all. And anyone who could say otherwise is dead, or working for us, with strong incentive not to talk.”

“So...”

“So they haven’t stopped hunting you. But you have us now. They’d never think in a million years that we’d have you, but not be putting you on trial. That’s to our advantage.”

“What are you going to do with me?”

“We want you to work for us, Jack. In an informal capacity. We could use your knowledge and expertise.”

“And Tony?”

“Him too.”

“He’ll never go for that.”

“Never’s a strong word. Let us present him with the options first.”

Larry smiles as he says that. The smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

/

 

The flight back to the States feels several hours longer than it is. A dour-looking FBI agent who Larry told to “keep an eye on him” is sitting across from him in the aisle, watching his every move.

The same agent insisted on putting plastic cuffs on him, despite Larry’s protests that Jack was cooperative enough not to need restraints.

“This is the man that once hijacked a commercial flight, sir,” he explained.

Of course the agent cuffed his hands out front so he could sit comfortably, which means Jack could easily overtake everyone on the plane. He’ll give them credit for trying.

He tries to catch some sleep, but that turns out to be impossible, so he just stares at the seat in front of him, thinking about Tony in the medical transport plane that took off shortly before they did.

He should have said more, but he didn’t expect this. Death, maybe. Not this.

 

 /

 

When they land at Reagan, Jack is shuttled into a black van and then there’s a silent ride to FBI headquarters.

They escort him out of the van and walk him to a side door, down two hallways and into a small holding room. There’s not a lot of people walking the halls, but then again, it is two o’ clock in the morning.

Larry sits down across from him. Jack’s hands aren’t restrained. Everyone seems to be treating him with a reserved kind of caution, like they’re afraid of him, but don’t want to show it.

“Hey,” Larry says.

“Hey,” Jack says back. His voice sounds tinny in his ears after not using it for so many hours.

“You can ask me whatever you want,” Larry says. “Within reason.”

“What does the FBI want me to do?”

“What do you mean?”

Janis Gold walks in at that moment, carrying two cups of coffee. “Hi Jack,” she murmurs, looking at him with a certain curiosity in her eyes. She ignores Larry completely.

“Hey,” Jack says. “How’s Chloe?”

He’s not quite sure why he asks her and not Larry, but it just comes out.

Janis turns bodily to Larry as if to defer to him, but keeps her eyes on Jack.

“Chloe’s here,” Larry says evasively. “At headquarters.”

“I want to see her. Is she still in custody?”

“Protective custody.”

“Have the charges against her been dropped?”

“We’re in negotiation.”

“Okay,” Jack says, cautiously.

“Jack, listen,” says Janis. “Chloe’s fine. She’s worried about you, actually. And, um, I’m sorry about Renee.”

“I’m sorry, too,” he says. “You were friends.”

Janis nods quickly. “Yeah, we were,” she says, with a soft rasp in her voice. “Hey, Tony’s okay, too. I mean, he’s stable. When they’re done with surgery he’ll be back here and you can see him.”

She puts the coffee down and flicks her eyes over Jack like she wants to say something more, but leaves without another word.

Jack takes a long sip of his. He wants to be lucid.

“Why are you handling me?”

“Hmm?” says Larry, who seems preoccupied.

“You didn’t treat me half this well when I was here as a consultant, now I’m here as a criminal - all of a sudden I’m the guest of honor. What changed?”

“The mood in Washington, to be honest. Look, Jack, at the end of her presidency, Taylor was paranoid, full of rage and frustration. Everything she did was based on half-cocked advice Logan had given her. So what she said to you and much of the manhunt against you was precipitated by that. Pillar was... you know, he’s a good agent. But Logan had him in his pocket. These were not people in their right minds, Jack, they’d been taken over by greed, they were acting irrationally, and _they_ were the ones out to burn you at the stake."

“With the way you’ve dealt with me in the past, I’m supposed to believe if I had walked into the FBI a week ago I would have gotten a pat on the back and a lollipop?”

“Jack, we don’t approve of your methods, but we’re familiar with them. We wouldn’t have sent you to a blacksite or executed you live on TV, no. Which is what you set yourself up for when you put yourself in the hands of the Russians.”

“Well, I’m back now. Tell me what you need from me. And from Tony, because if you think he’s going to come work for you, prison on the table or not, you’re out of your damn mind.”

“Like I said, just come be consultants. I’m not asking you to participate in field missions or put your lives in danger at all. I’m not asking you to agree with me all the time. In fact I want you to disagree with me. As much of a prick you can be when you’re right and everyone else is wrong, I appreciate that you are right a good amount of the time.”

He leans back in his chair and pushes his hair off his forehead, sighing.

“Jack, if you think about what you pulled off on the day Hassan was murdered, even though things went pear-shaped... it was unprecedented. And the things you did the day we had to contain the prion variant. And Tony too. You work well together, I want you here, on our side. I want you fighting the kind of corruption that we faced from Logan because you both know what it looks like and how to handle it, to an extent.”

“And Chloe?”

“Chloe is brilliant as an analyst, obviously. And,” Larry cocks an eyebrow, “she’s one of about five people you’re willing to work with. And vice versa.”

He can’t argue with that one.

“She’s already agreed to work for us. CTU New York is all but gone. They lost half their top employees in one day. And her husband is still out of work. She could either provide for her son or go to prison, those were her options.”

Jack’s exhaustion hits him all of a sudden. Coffee can only do so much. “When can I see Kim?”

“Soon. We’ll get you and Tony set up in another safehouse nearby, once he’s cleared to leave our care and I’ve fully debriefed you both. Then you can start work.” Off his look Larry adds, “Jack, we have a country to clean up, here.”

He stands up, sliding the folder he brought with him under his arm.

“What’s in there?”

“Info I brought to help persuade you, but I figured I wouldn’t have to use it. And I was right. You do like to get right to the point, Bauer.”

“Can someone come get me when Tony gets in?”

“Janis will. She’s here tonight supervising our analysts. We have a lot of data to crunch.” Larry sighs. “Get some sleep at some point,” he says on his way out.

Jack stares at the table. Somehow he doesn’t see that happening.


	11. 11

Janis comes in to get him a few hours later. They’re joined at the door by a plainclothes agent and get in an elevator.

She's quiet and fidgety. Jack doesn’t think much of it.

They’re met outside Tony’s room by an attendant who murmurs to Jack, “He’s not awake. We had to sedate him when he woke up earlier.”

“Why?”

The attendant presses his lips together like he’s not sure how to respond. “He was agitated.”

“And...”

“He was asking for you. Um, well, demanding you, actually. We thought if you’re here when he wakes up again he might be a little more relaxed.”

Jack thinks of it from Tony’s point of view. Right after they were cornered by Russians, he had passed out from blood loss and hasn’t been conscious since. And Jack was nowhere to be found when he woke up. Of course it looks bad. He must have panicked.

“Yeah, I’ll stay,” Jack says, and walks in.

Tony’s out like a light, his chest rising and falling softly. He looks small, like everybody does in a hospital bed. Someone closes the door behind him. There’s a camera in the corner of the room, and he’s sure the agent that walked him down is standing outside.

“Hey,” Jack says softly, and scoots his chair a little closer.

He takes Tony’s hand in his, squeezes it, and drops it. Jack settles back into his chair and tries to fall asleep.

 

/

 

“Jack.”

He feels a hand on his shoulder and stirs. When he opens his eyes he has a moment of confusion, and then he looks up at Tony and it all comes back.

“Hey,” he says, his voice thick with sleep. He clears his throat.

“Mind filling me in?” Tony looks pale under the florescent lights and his eyes are rimmed with heavy dark circles. He still hasn’t moved his hand from Jack’s shoulder.

“We’re at the FBI.”

“Yeah, I got that part.”

“I think Larry can explain the rest.”

“I’d like you to. Where’s Chloe?”

“I don’t know.”

Tony starts to get up. Jack grabs at him but he swats his hand away. “I just have to piss.”

When he comes back he sits on the edge of his bed instead of getting back in it.

“How do you feel?” Jack asks.

Tony snorts and shakes his head.

“You want ice chips or anything?”

“Jack, I’m fine, just confused.”

Jack plays with the blanket on his bed, picking out a thread and unraveling it.

“They were on us the whole time. West sold us out. Matveyev was theirs. The suspicious guy on the ship was theirs.”

“So -”

“So they were planning this whole time to bring us back and have us join them. Larry wants us to work for the FBI.”

Tony looks at him with that sad wide-eyed look of his and there’s something so pathetic about him all of a sudden that Jack’s heart stutters.

“And you don’t think that’s suspicious?"

“What are our options?”

Tony sighs. “I don’t know.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

They look at each other. After a moment, Jack drops his head, breaking eye contact. He knows why Tony looks as defeated as he does. It's terrible, to make peace with your death and then have to go on living.

“They’re going to take us to a safehouse,” Jack says, “and we can regroup there.”

Tony nods.

“I’ll be back,” he says. He gets up and walks out. The agent outside glances at him nervously. He looks back like, _go ahead, follow me if that’s your assignment_ , and turns the corner to the office that’s there. It’s laid out a lot like CTU Medical was, with only a few people there, not up to much. His eyes light on the woman sitting at the largest desk. She’s in scrubs and typing something up. Jack gives her the universal “help me” look and she gets up.

“Yes?”

“Are you the doctor on call here?”

“Yes,” she says, smiling tersely at him. “Dr. Vicinski. What can I help you with, Mr. Bauer?”

“How soon can Tony Almeida be released?”

“Tony Almeida...” she reaches behind herself on the desk, grabbing a sheet of paper and taking a look at it. “Later today. The GSW wasn’t too serious. It was a ricochet, and through and through. So you’ll be living with him for the interim?”

“Yeah.”

That’s weird to think about. Living with Tony.

“Hmm,” she says. “Well, if you could keep him from overexerting himself, that would be nice. Don’t let him drink on his pain meds.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Without warning, she pulls his shirt up. “When’s the last time you had these attended to?”

“When we landed in Bermuda.”

“Okay. I think those stitches could be removed and replaced with dissolving ones. How’s your head feeling?”

“Huh?”

“I mean you had a pretty serious blow to the head a few days ago, that causing you any issues? How about stress flare-ups of your brain damage from the prion variant?”

So she read his file too.

“I feel fine,” he says.

“Nausea, dizziness, blurry vision, disorientation...”

“No.”

She squints at him but nods. “Okay. Come with me and we’ll take care of your stitches.”

 

/

 

A standard-issue black Ford takes them to the safehouse.

There’s a lead car out in front of them. Eight agents total. Larry told him there would be a total of five guarding the house at all times, with two permanently assigned to them.

“How many with Kim and her family?”

“Three. That’s more than enough, Jack.”

“You better hope you’re right about that,” he’d said. Larry had given him another one of those terse smiles and walked off to go “take care of something”, at the exact same moment Janis had shown up to escort Jack and Tony to the car. He’d wonder why they were avoiding each other if he cared enough to think about it.

Tony is sitting as far away from him as possible, not looking out the window, not making eye contact, just giving a kind of flat stare into middle ground. Jack knows he’s on an intense cocktail of pills, but he’s still concerned.

The sun’s gone down by the time they pull up to the safehouse. Jack has dozed off and he’s roused by the sound of crunching gravel.

Two agents walk in with them, and three stay outside, looking like they plan to be there all night.

“We’ll leave in a second and let you get settled in,” the smaller one says. “Frank’s just looking around.”

Frank walks upstairs. There’s some clunking and crashing around, as if he’s checking for suspicious material by bouncing furniture off the walls, and then he returns.

“We’re clear,” he says, giving Jack and Tony a brief wave with his detection wand.

“Okay. Shout if you need anything, guys,” the first agent says. “We’ll be outside. I’m Chris, by the way.”

They leave, giving the entryway a cursory sweep on the way out.

When Jack turns around Tony is pulling his shirt off and wetting a washcloth in the sink. He slaps it to his side, against his stitches and the angry red skin surrounding them, and holds it there with one hand, opening the fridge with the other.

Jack’s distracted by the dimples at the bottom of his back, right above his ass.

He doesn’t quite manage to look up before Tony turns and he’s rewarded with a small smirk.

“Dirty old man,” Tony says, heading for the staircase.

Jack follows. “Dirty old grandpa,” he mutters.

Tony snorts.

The duffel is in the master bedroom. They change in front of each other. Tony winces as he does, and moves to leave the room when he’s done.

“Hold on,” Jack says.

He turns back around. “What?”

“You don’t want to sleep here?”

Tony looks from him to the bed and back. “If you want me to.”

“If _you_ want to,” Jack says, exasperated. “And yeah, I want you to.”

“I was gonna take a shower first,” says Tony.

“Me too.”

“All right, we’ll both do that... and I’ll be back.”

Jack’s cock twitches as he watches him leave and he gets a little angry with himself. The last thing he needs when Tony is being skittish like this is to make it seem like he wants something.

And he doesn’t, honestly. All he wants is to take a shower and go to sleep and not wake up for about a month.

 

/

 

He takes his time and hopes that he’s leaving enough water for Tony, but isn’t worried about it enough to get out before he’s warm all over and feels like he’s gotten some of the grime that comes from living on a boat for almost a week out from his pores.

When he gets out Tony is already there, lying far enough to the left of the bed that the message is clear. Jack gets under the covers on the right and turns away from him.

“How’s the drugs?” he mutters.

“Good.”

“You sure _you’re_ good?”

“You know I just need time to adjust, Jack. Give me my time, all right?”

“Yeah. Sure. That’s fine.”

“You can talk to me -”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Okay.”

/

 

When he wakes up he comes to slowly, realizing one thing at a time. It’s early - the sun isn’t up yet. It’s kind of cold in their bedroom. And Tony is hovering over him, lifting his shirt up, kissing at his stomach.

“Hey,” he murmurs, “what -”

Tony shushes him and keeps at it, kissing lower and lower, kissing his scars, and then moving his boxers down over his hips, mouthing at his cock gently.

Jack lets his head fall back against the pillow.

When he takes Jack in his mouth he takes him deep almost immediately, giving Jack that sense of building pressure at the base of his spine, and then he removes his mouth again, sucking at the insides of Jack’s thighs.

Jack laughs softly. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Tony says as he moves back to Jack’s dick. His breath is warm in a nice way. He sucks Jack off slowly, with one hand resting on his hipbone to steady him. He keeps teasing him, drawing back and kissing everywhere else and then coming back again, letting Jack brush against his throat.

Jack reaches down for his head and spreads his fingers out over his buzzcut, stroking his scalp. He lets one finger slip downward, and he runs the pad of his thumb over the scar near Tony’s eyebrow. The pressure is building again, this time in his stomach, and he shifts on the bed, grabbing a handful of the sheets.

Tony grabs him around the base of his cock and takes him even deeper, and then draws back, sucking at him with a kind of desperation, like he wants Jack to get off as fast as possible.

When he comes it’s one of those wonderful orgasms, the kind that gets right in your bones and makes you grateful to even be alive.

Tony spits, but he doesn’t really _spit_ , it’s more like he takes a tissue and rolls the come off of his tongue and onto it. It almost seems like he’s trying to be courteous to Jack. Then he leans forward and kisses him, long and deep, so he can taste himself.

Tony moves over his face, kissing the bruise near his eye from the scuffle on the docks, and then the curve of his jaw. The space between his ear and his hairline.

He starts to suck at his neck, but they both know he can’t leave a hickey somewhere so obvious, and soon he moves down to Jack’s ribs, and his lips and tongue work at the scarred and battered skin there.

Tony seems to exhaust himself after a few minutes and he leans off to the side, elbows on the bed beside Jack, their legs intertwined.

“I should make it look like I’m staying in there, just in case,” Tony says after a moment. 

“Where?” Jack says, groggy and confused.

Tony snorts. “‘My’ room.”

Jack clears his throat. “Mm. Good idea.”

Tony gets up and collects some clean clothes from the suitcase. “Are we seeing Chloe today?”

Jack sits up. “Are we? I don’t know.”

Tony nods slowly. “I’ll try and find out,” he says, starting to leave.

“Wait.”

He turns back.

“Are we okay?” Jack asks him.

“Yeah. Yeah, we’re okay.”

“It’s a little weird to wake somebody up, blow them and then run out of the room.”

“I’m a little weird, Jack, we’re both a little weird,” Tony says, padding out of the room in his socks. He hears the door down the hall close, very gently, and then there’s silence.


	12. 12

Back at the FBI, the halls are packed with agents milling around. Conversations are impossible to make out over the sounds of papers fluttering and clacking heels. Escorted by Frank, they walk by station after station. Jack glances through a glass partition and sees a young agent with a binder open on her lap, sanitizing documents with a huge black marker.

Frank is silent as he leads them into a small room, empty save for a table, four chairs and a phone. “Janis’ll be here soon,” he mutters as he closes the door.

She’s not; they wait there about five or ten minutes, sitting in uncomfortable silence. Tony keeps rubbing his throat, right about his Adam’s apple. He must have taken Jack too deep. He seems like he’s doing it without realizing, not doing it to make a point, which somehow feels worse.

The door opens and Chloe appears. She looks exhausted, but her face lights up when she sees Jack - as much as Chloe’s face can light up, anyway.

He stands up and she hugs him.

“I thought it was over that time,” she whispers in his ear.

“Me too,” he says, patting her shoulder and clearing his throat.

They break away from each other. Janis stands there glancing between the three of them.

“Well, um, I’ll leave you guys alone to catch up a little. Um, not really alone, of course -” she says, gesturing at the ceiling, and then turning to Tony. “I don’t think I’ve said hi to you yet, so, hi.”

He looks at her for just long enough to start to make her uncomfortable. “Hi, Janis.”

“Larry will be in, give him a few minutes,” Janis says. “Obviously we’re still really busy with... you know...”

She bustles out of the room.

“Hey, Chloe,” Tony says, rubbing his eyes.

“Hi.”

“Chloe,” Jack says, “what did you agree to do for the FBI? They haven’t given us any specifics.”

She shrugs. “Be a consulting analyst for them. Like I did when we were trying to find the prion variant, but full-time.”

“They’ve only told us they want us as consultants for field work. Nothing about full-time.”

“Tony agreed to work for the FBI?” Chloe says incredulously.

“Not yet.”

They both glance across the table at him. He looks back without any kind of specific facial expression; he just looks bored.

“We’re figuring it out,” Jack says. “I’m guessing Larry’s going to bring us more information today.”

Chloe flicks her eyes over him. “So do you think they’re not being specific because they want to have an out if you become a liability, or because they don’t know what’s going on here enough to know what they need you for?”

“Good question,” Jack says.

“I’d put money on the first one,” Tony says, looking at the ceiling, “but they did already put me in prison once.”

“Work release,” Jack corrects.

“Thanks to Taylor, not thanks to Larry.”

“It doesn’t matter now. You know Larry feels guilty for sending you away after what you did that day, and wants to cut you a break if he can.”

“Yeah, you’re giving Larry a lot of slack, Jack, don’t you remember how he fired Renee?”

“You like to ask me if I remember things I’d have no reason not to remember. That’s a bad habit of yours.”

“Just bringing your attention to it.”

“My attention is on it, believe me.”

Chloe looks back and forth between them in an exasperated way.

The door opens and the three of them turn in surprise. It’s Larry.

“Hi there,” he says, giving them a wan smile. “Okay, let’s get started.”

He sits in the empty seat next to Tony and lets a manilla folder flop open on the table. More sanitized documents. He flips through them for a while, looking up at Jack occasionally.

“So our goal here,” he says, “is make as much use of your...”

Larry looks pained for a moment. He continues, “Knowledge and... _expertise_... as possible, while at the same time debriefing you about the events of the last few weeks, and protecting you from any future attacks. Jack is by far the most appealing target to any Russian extremists, followed by Chloe. Tony, I don’t think you’re in much danger, other than people using you to get to Jack.”

Tony cuts his eyes at Larry for a moment, and then looks at Chloe. They seem to have a very short, silent conversation.

“I’m not gonna lie to you,” Larry says, “we’re going to lengths to make you as comfortable as possible, Jack. I’m letting you see Kim tonight -”

Jack’s heart leaps.

“- but, this is all predicated on the fact that you are going to do everything you can to help us, starting right now. I avoided debriefing you and Tony for as long as possible, but I can’t anymore, and you’ll need to tell us every last detail you can remember. If you lie, we will know. Don’t try to protect anyone.”

He gets up. “We’ll start debriefs within the hour. Start thinking about what you’re going to tell us.”

Larry leaves.

“You’ve been debriefed?” Jack asks Chloe.

She nods. “Right away. They wanted a statement and I think they wanted to make sure we didn’t have the chance to be alone together and get our stories straight.”

“Fine. We don’t have anything to hide.”

Tony gives him a significant look, which he ignores.

He runs his hands through his hair. “I want to say, I’m sorry for bringing you both into this.”

“Jack, we brought ourselves into this,” Chloe says, sounding testy.

He nods. “Yeah. Fine. You’re right.”

 

/

 

The debrief is long and miserable, as he expected. They focus in on Tony, pressing him hard about how Tony got him out of New York, Tony’s gang connections, and then they run him down about all the things Chloe agreed to do for him, like they’re cross-checking his testimony with hers. Dana’s death comes up, Cole comes up.

He lays it all out, and doesn’t sugarcoat anything. Every time he gets defensive the agent debriefing him comes back at him harder, so he learns early on to just give in.

Jack just keeps reminding himself how much he wants to see Kim. It’s only hours away if he can make it through this.

“Were you romantically involved with Renee Walker?” the agent drones.

That one throws him. “Excuse me?”

“Simple question, sir. Were you sleeping with Walker or otherwise involved with her?”

Jack stares at him. He stares right back.

“We slept together,” Jack says, finally.

He doesn’t seemed moved by that and makes a note of it like he’s made a note of everything else so far. “Okay. So to what extent would you say your actions on February the 27th and the 28th were impacted by your involvement with Walker? Up to and including the murder of Vladimir Laitanan and subsequent murders, such as the murder of Pavel Tokarev?”

“I didn’t kill Laitanan.”

“You allowed Walker to. You knew her to be unstable. Did your attraction or attachment to her cloud your judgment? Yes or no?”

“No,” Jack says through gritted teeth.

The agent writes that down.

 

/

 

“Where’s Cole?” is the first thing he asks Janis when she escorts him back to the little room they were in before. Tony is already back, sitting at the table, which now has two chairs at it. Chloe is nowhere to be seen.

“Cole?”

“Ortiz. CTU New York.”

“Ah,” says Janis. “Um, hold on.”

She gets a small tablet out of her pocket and types something into it, waits a moment, and types again. Tony looks up at him with a blank, glassy-eyed expression.

“Yeah, he’s in prison,” she says.

“Wait, what?”

“He did assist Chloe and Arlo Glass in your escape.”

Jack barely remembers who Arlo even is. “Yeah, but Chloe’s not being held.”

She shrugs. “Chloe made a deal. And Chloe didn’t murder Kevin Wade and Nick Coughlin.”

“ _Who_?”

“I don’t know, but it’s all right here.”

He stares at her.

“Look, Jack, I have a lot on my plate,” she says. “How important is it that you know what’s going on with every person you’ve ever worked with?”

“On the contrary, I’m completely in the dark here,” he snaps.

“And it’ll have to stay that way until we’ve processed you and given you a security clearance, and then you can find whatever information you want. In the meantime, I need to do my job!”

“Fine.”

Janis leaves, pushing her glasses up on her nose and scowling.

“You need to relax, Jack,” Tony says.

“Are you coming with me tonight?” Jack demands.

Tony looks at him. “Where?”

“Larry’s letting me see Kim and her family.”

“They’re in a safehouse?”

“Yeah.”

“If you want me there.”

All at once, Jack feels exhausted. “Of course I do.”

Tony nods. “Then yeah.”


	13. 13

It’s still winter, and still getting dark early; they leave around seven.

When they pull up to the house there are two cars already there, and agents stationed out front and to the sides of the house.

Frank and Chris walk them to the door. Tony’s acting uncomfortable, in that way that he has. He refuses to make eye contact for very long and keeps pressing his hand to his freshly bandaged side as if to make sure he’s still injured.

They walk in. At first, all they see is an FBI agent standing near the staircase, but then Kim comes flying down the stairs.

Her face lights up at the sight of Jack and she rushes over to him, seizing him around the chest and pressing her face into his shoulder. His heart feels like it’s clutched in someone’s fist.

“Hey,” he mutters. “Hey, sweetie.”

“Dad,” she whispers back. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left. I shouldn’t have let you stay -”

“Don’t, it was my decision -”

“I should have remembered nothing good ever comes out of you being at CTU. I should have insisted. I was so worried about you, Dad, oh my God...”

“It’s okay. It’s all over now.”

Kim squeezes him extra hard for a moment and then turns to Tony, who’s been watching them from the entryway.

“Hey,” she says, approaching him tentatively. After a moment, she hugs him too, and whispers something. Jack thinks it must be _thank you_.

Tony just nods, patting her on the back.

As they let go, Stephen is coming down the stairs with Teri in his arms. She squeals. “Jack!”

“Hi there,” says Jack, beaming and Stephen hands her to him. “Sorry you all got dragged out here,” he says, to no one in particular.

“Ah, it’s okay,” says Stephen, laughing. “I’m getting paid leave, that’s never a bad thing...”

Teri squirms and Kim takes her from him, setting her down on the floor. “Yeah, especially since he never takes a vacation otherwise,” she mutters good-naturedly. “By the way, Stephen, this is Tony. He and my dad used to work together...”

She trails off, which could either be her California drawl or her way of intimating all the things that have gone down between them over the years that can’t reasonably fall under the heading of _coworkers_.

Tony and Stephen shake hands.

“Why don’t you go ahead and finish up dinner, honey,” says Kim, “so I can catch up with my dad a little?”

“Sure,” Stephen says, and leaves the room. Teri tags along after him.

Once they sit down, they realize that they don’t have much small talk to make.

“So,” Kim says.

Tony kind of looks like he wants to drop off the face of the earth.

“How are you, Dad?”

“Fine,” Jack says automatically.

“Are you sure? You can talk to me, you know,” she says. “How’s your head?”

“My head’s fine, Kim. I’ve been looked at.”

“Where have you been working?” Tony says, sitting back like he’s getting comfortable.

“I haven’t.” She sighs. “I’m looking to get back when Teri is a little older.”

“Private sector?”

“Yeah.”

“I could give you some names,” Tony says, sounding brisker than Jack suspects he means to. A bit of a chill comes through the room. They’re getting too close to the topic of Michelle for everyone’s comfort.

“Thanks,” Kim says. “I’d really appreciate it.”

Her sincerity is evident, and for a moment Jack is overwhelmed by affection for her.

“Chase actually offered me a job at his new firm a while back,” she adds.

“Edmunds?” Jack says, surprised.

“Do I know any other Chases? I told him no. I mean, obviously.”

“Good,” Jack says.

Tony laughs.

“What?”

“I kind of forgot about Chase,” Tony says. “He was, ah, a little attached to you.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. They all laugh.

Stephen pokes his head back in the room. “Everything’s done, babe,” he says to Kim. “If you could set the table, I want to talk to Jack for a second.”

Jack gets up.

“Sure,” Kim says, and she picks up Teri, who is heading toward the couch with a fistful of colored pencils. “Sit with Tony for a little bit.”

“Uhh,” Tony says, looking back and forth between Kim and Jack for a few beats, then consenting with a soft sigh.

Teri seems to take to him immediately, patting his shaved head and pronouncing him “bald like Daddy”. Tony looks aggrieved. Jack realizes he has no idea how Tony feels about little kids. He has no idea how Tony feels about a lot of things.

Jack joins Stephen in the kitchen.

“Hey,” Stephen says quietly. “I just wanted to check in, see what’s going on. They’re not telling us a whole lot.”

Jack sighs. “I can’t tell you anything they haven’t.”

“Look, I -”

“I can’t tell you because I don’t know.”

Stephen’s mouth makes a round o. “Okay. Damn. That’s too bad.”

“Is Kim okay?”

“Yeah. I mean, she was really worried about you, but... and I don’t mean this as a criticism, but I think she’s used to not having you around. She’d already come to terms with it. I think she was mostly concerned about what to tell Teri.”

Jack nods. “Yeah.”

“You don’t think we’ll be here all that long, do you?”

“As long as it takes. Maybe another few weeks. After that FBI Los Angeles is going to get you set up in a safehouse back home.”

“Okay,” Stephen says, nodding. “Thanks, Jack. For being straight with me.”

Jack nods back at him, feeling like a heel, and walks into the small dining room off the kitchen, where Kim is finishing up. She smiles and disappears into the living room to fetch Tony and Teri.

He sits, thinking, _this is all that’s left of my family, here in this house_.

 

/

 

Dinner is awkward, but everyone is doing their best to pretend it isn’t. Stephen pulls Tony out of his shell by talking about sports. He’s smarter than he looks, which you would hope for in a doctor, and he seems to know exactly how light to keep the conversation.

Jack and Kim don’t really talk. Teri is sitting between them and she keeps Jack by babbling about nothing the way kids do.

Kim keeps smiling at both of them, but she seems preoccupied. As soon as everyone’s finished she gets up, starts collecting plates, and says, “Tony, can you help me out in the kitchen?”

“Honey, I can -” Stephen starts to get up and she stops him in his tracks with a look.

“It’s fine,” Tony says.

Stephen smiles at Jack and beckons him into the living room. The FBI agent who was loitering there excuses himself into the entryway.

“So how’s Teri?” Jack says softly.

“She’s doing all right,” Stephen says. “Actually, she likes plane rides. Isn’t that right, monkey?”

Teri flops down on the couch and giggles. “When Grandpa Jack comes to Los Angeles, will we take a plane every day?”

“No, honey, if he lives near us we won’t have to take a plane to see him anymore.”

“Oh,” she says, looking saddened.

“I should probably start getting her ready for bed,” Stephen says. “I didn’t realize it got so late. You want to come up in, say, fifteen minutes, read her a bedtime story?”

“Baby bear, what do you see!”

Stephen grabs her and hoists her over his shoulder. She giggles even more. “You’re seriously not tired of that one yet? I don’t think we even packed it.”

“Yeah, that sounds perfect. I’ll just go help them in the kitchen,” Jack says, as Stephen carries Teri up the stairs while she protests the nixing of Baby Bear.

Jack walks back toward the kitchen and clears the few remaining forks and knives. He heads toward the archway of the kitchen but stops, not walking into their view. They’re talking quietly.

“- always a problem.”

“Not really.”

“Okay.” Kim sighs. “Okay, good. Um, I’ve wanted to say something to you...”

“Fire away.”

“I always meant to thank you and Michelle for watching after me for my dad. I feel really stupid that I didn’t, you know, before, but I didn’t know the full extent of it  -”

He cuts her off. “We liked knowing you were safe, Kim.”

“Right.” She sounds choked up, and clears her throat. “There was something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

“All right...” Tony says warily.

Jack wonders if he should burst in right now and preempt this. He has a feeling he knows what’s coming. But as he does Kim is already talking, and -

“I was wondering if you and my dad...”

It’s too late. Maybe he should just walk away now, while he has the chance.

He closes his eyes instead.

“... okay, how to phrase this,” Kim says. “Um... Are you and my dad involved?”

There’s a pregnant pause.

“Involved?” Tony repeats.

“I hate bringing this up -”

“What are you bringing up?” Tony says, very, very quietly.

“I know what happened between you guys. I’ve known for a while. I’m not upset, I’m just -”

“Kim -”

“I promise I’m not upset.”

“I don’t care if you’re upset, or not upset,” Tony says. “This is inappropriate.”

“I need to know.”

“You really don’t, Kim.”

“Do you think I care? Do you think I’m judging either of you? You think I’d rather still think my dad had an affair with _Nina Myers_ -”

“I’m not having this conversation with you.”

“You kind of owe it to me!”

“With all due respect, I don’t. You want to talk about this? Talk to Jack.”

“You’re basically admitting to me -”

“This isn’t okay.”

“No, you know what isn’t okay? Not knowing what’s going on in his life, not knowing who’s looking out for him, or who’s trying to kill him, not knowing what I should tell my daughter. Tony, if you told me that you were involved with him, that would be a really good thing for me to hear. Because I trust you. And he trusts you. And you’ve always tried to protect him.”

He snorts. “You trust me? Why?”

“Why not?”

Tony goes quiet.

Jack’s heart is beating out of his chest. He’s halfway between barging in and sneaking away. He hates everything about this, but most of all that Kim feels like she can’t come to him.

“I’m not pretending like I understand,” Kim says. “I know it’s just, you know, one of those things that doesn’t really make sense. And I know you’d rather I didn’t know and especially not talk to you about it.”

“Kim,” Tony says softly, like he’s in pain.

“I don’t care, though. Seriously, I don’t care. Just promise me that you will be there for him still. Promise me you’ll do your best not to disappear.”

“I’m not asking for the moon.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” Tony snaps. “This is none of your business.”

“No,” she says coolly. “Maybe it’s not. But I’m asking anyway. Do you care about him?”

More silence. Stony, thick silence.

“Do you care about Jack?”

“He’d be dead twenty times over if I didn’t,” Tony says with a rasp in his voice.

 “Okay. Make me a promise like you made him a promise. If you care, it shouldn’t be hard.”

“Kim, frankly, I can’t believe you just confronted me to accuse me of, basically, of, ah, sleeping with your _father_ , and all you’re asking me to do is the same thing I’ve been doing for fifteen years now. Yeah. Of course. No shit. Is that really what this is about?”

“Probably not, probably I’m also worried for my dad’s sanity, is that okay? Is that not my right? Wasn’t he with Agent Walker when she was shot to death? I mean, am I following all this right? That was, what, a _week_ ago, Tony?”

“Ask him. Not me.”

“I can’t ask him. He stonewalls. You are the only person I can talk to about this. Walker died and he went on a murderous rampage -”

“I’m not planning on dying, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Nobody’s ever planning on it.”

Tony scoffs. “I don’t know about _that,”_ he says darkly.

Kim passes over that and steamrolls ahead. “So, Walker - did she mean that little to him? Why would he disembowel her killer if that was the case?”

“Look, I don’t know about your dad and Renee, all right? He’s barely talked about it. It’s not like they were _seeing_ each other. I don’t think he was just angry about her, honestly. He was, but I think he’s just tired of losing people. Losing your mom wrecked him, losing Audrey wrecked him, and it’s just kept going like that.”

“But you just came back in his life, and...”

“He’s good at slipping in and out of time. I see him for the first time in years, he acts like it’s been days.”

Kim’s quiet.

“I don’t know if I have the answers you want. I don’t know if Jack even does.”

“I just want to know what he’s thinking.”

“Good luck with that.”

There’s quiet and the clanking of a dish and Kim appears in the doorway. She sees Jack and he raises his hand to reassure her, but she gasps and backs up a step, elbowing Tony in the stomach. He turns, sees Jack and a deeply uneasy look spreads across his face.

“Were you _listening_ to us, Dad?”

“It was a little hard to ignore.”

She flushes. “You should have walked in! Or walked away!”

“Jack -” Tony cuts in, but Jack shoots him an icy look and he falls silent.

“If you want to be in the loop, Kim, you need to come to me.”

Her eyes harden. “Dad, you were eavesdropping on a private conversation between two grown adults.”

“Honestly, I don’t really care. I heard what I heard. You don’t need to go behind my back like this.”

“You don’t talk to me!”

“You never asked about this. Ever, Kim.”

“And why would I? God, you don’t even understand how awkward this is for me -”

“So you’re more comfortable talking to _Tony_ about it? Who you haven’t seen in _how_ many years?”

Tony moves as if to get away and leave them alone together, but Jack gives him another look and he stills.

“It’s different, and you know it, it’s not nearly as hard.”

“Kim, you do not have these conversations behind my back.”

“He was way more willing to discuss it than you ever would have been. And I wanted his opinion, not yours.”

“Yeah, I heard exactly how willing to discuss it he was.”

Tony’s gaze flits around the room, never landing on anything.

“Dad,” Kim says firmly, “you are not objective when it comes to yourself or your relationships. Not at all. I love you dearly, but if there was anything Barry ever told me that held to be true -”

“Barry was a piece of shit who was taking advantage of you, Kim.”

She carries on as if he didn’t speak. “- it was that. Look, you’ve done so much for me, and so much to protect me, and I am grateful, Dad, you know I am. But things don’t happen in a vacuum. You kept going back and back and back again to CTU, and taking this abuse and bringing this hell down on your life and mine. I can’t understand why. I can’t trust you not to do it again.”

“Kim,” Tony says softly. She doesn’t seem to hear.

“You don’t know what happened that day,” Jack says. “I thought I was out. I thought we had gotten past it. And then they killed Renee right in front of me.”

“As soon as Renee died you should have gotten on a plane to Los Angeles.”

“If I had, thousands more people would be dead!” he yells, full of rage now, not at Kim but what she represents to him in this moment.

“That is not your job to fix! _That is not your responsibility anymore!”_

“Someone has to -”

“Not _you!_ Not you!” She’s on the brink of tears. “You want me to trust you - you make it so I _can’t_ trust you! I don’t know where you’re going to be, if you’re going to be safe -”

“Then why even ask?” he roars. “Why ask Tony, of all people? You think you can trust Tony?”

“He only lied to me about you once,” she says. “And he did it to keep both of us safe.”

Tony opens his mouth to say something at the same time someone behind them clears his throat.

They turn to see Stephen.

“Sorry,” he says, “but, uh, Teri’s down for the night, and the agents outside are getting kind of antsy.”

“Thanks, honey,” Kim says. “Can you give us a moment and I’ll see them out?”

“Yup,” he says, smiling and leaving the room.

“Kim,” Tony says. “Let me just say something, nobody interrupt me for a minute. The FBI wants me and Jack to take consultant posts at the agency. It’s their way of cutting a deal with us. It would shield us from the people who want Jack dead and give us the protection of the FBI, but we wouldn’t be directly involved in field work anymore. Jack was gonna take the offer. I was on the fence but now I think I’m taking it too.”

Kim looks at Jack. “You’d be here,” she says.

He nods. “For a while, yeah.”

“How long a while?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay,” she says. “I mean, we could make it work, if you want to see Teri...”

His heart clenches. “Of course I do.”

“So you’re not going anywhere?” she asks Tony.

“I guess not,” he says.


	14. 14

The ride back is uncomfortable. They’re both silent. Jack is dying to lay into him, just dying for that release, and maybe it’s not right or cool or fair, maybe it’s five or six years of pent-up anger disguised as tonight’s anger. But Tony has ducked his anger for five or six years. Tony has run from him and hid from him in a way unbefitting of their relationship. In a way that feels to Jack like a big _fuck you._ And in a way that he hasn’t been allowed to be mad about, because Tony always manages to somehow end up on Jack’s side of things.

When they get back the agents give the first floor a cursory check; while they do, Tony stands with his hands on his hips in the middle of the dark living room, waiting. As soon as Frank shuts the door behind himself, Jack turns the light on and moves toward Tony.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

He sounds as barely restrained as he is. Tony just looks at him.

“She knew a lot already, Jack, I wasn’t going to lie to her.”

“It’s not your place to make that decision. It’s not your place to discuss our -”

“Yeah, okay, Jack. It’s not my place. It’s not anybody’s place but yours until the moment you decide to pawn your responsibilities off on somebody else.”

“If Kim is as separated from this situation as you’d like to think, then you don’t have any responsibility to tell her anything you don’t want to! She doesn’t need to be reassured, why the hell do you need to respect her urge to pry into my life?”

“Don’t turn it around on me, Jack,” Tony says, his voice rising. “She _knows_ already, she knows what we did, she knows what we’re doing. Denying it doesn’t help. I’m just as uncomfortable as you are, all right?”

Jack moves closer to him. Tony glances up and down his body nervously.

“You sure about that?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know, Tony. You tell me."

“You know, I don’t think the problem here is that Kim knows about us. I think your problem is that she called you out on the fact that you feel guilty for fucking me, what, two days after Renee died? And -”

“Don’t start.”

“And,” Tony continues. “You never got over your guilt about fucking me when you were still married to Teri, did you?”

“Do _not_ go there.”

“You feel guilty, Jack? You feel guilty over me? You feel guilty that you fucked Nina, too? Is that what it’s still about, after all this ti -”

Jack grabs Tony around the throat and moves him back back back, slamming him onto the kitchen table. Tony stares up at him with a cold look.

“Don’t,” he hisses.

“Kim’s more forgiving than you give her credit for,” Tony says, his voice strangled by Jack’s hand. “You’re the one with the problem about us, not her.”

“Tony...”

“Yeah, it’s fine for you, right, out in Bermuda, or wherever the fuck, where nobody knows you, but now we’re back here, and you’re not used to being exposed. Jack, who caught all the fallout when they found out about us? You were gone -”

“I was mourning my wife,” Jack snarls.

“You were _gone_ -”

“Shut up. Shut up. Where were _you_? You let me think you were _dead_ -”

“You were gone first, Jack!”

Tony is grasping at him, trying to get enough leverage to get out from under Jack, but he holds him steady. The friction of their pelvises as he struggles, the sensation of Tony’s jugular pumping hard, right under Jack’s hand, and the sight of Tony panting underneath him... all of it is making Jack hard. An unpleasant kind of hard, a kind of hard he doesn’t want to be, but it’s there and Tony feels it. He sags back against the table, breathing hard.

“Interesting way of shutting somebody up, Jack.” His voice is different than it was a moment ago.

Jack’s brain feels foggy. “Hold on,” he says, backing away and letting go.

He walks upstairs, driven by a force that feels outside himself, apart from him. He goes into his bedroom and kneels down to the duffel bag, unzipping an outside pocket, feeling inside underneath a flap.

Jack comes back downstairs with the lube Tony bought on the boardwalk in one hand and a single condom in the other.

Tony is lying in an obscene position on the table. He rolled onto his stomach while Jack was upstairs and now he’s bent in half over the table.

He looks at Jack. The darkness of the kitchen is casting a shadow on his face and Jack can’t read his eyes.

Jack moves to him, his cock throbbing, his mouth dry. He unbuckles his belt and spreads lube over his fingers.

For a moment he does nothing, flips the cap back on the lube and stands there. Then he settles his hands on Tony’s hips and slides him back so he’s flush against Jack’s pelvis, digging his nails into Tony’s ass as he does.

He rolls his hips against his ass and enjoys the soft sound he gets in return. He starts to pull Tony’s pants off his ass.

“Is this why you picked a fight with me?”

Tony’s silent.

“Because then you wouldn’t have to ask me for it?”

“I don’t have any problem asking you to fuck me.”

His voice is low and breathy. Jack can tell from how he sounds just how aroused he is. He pushes one hand against the back of Tony’s neck, and pushes into him with the other. Two fingers, immediately, up to the knuckle. It’s easier than it should be. Jack wonders if he fingered himself while he showered last night and he’s further aroused by the thought, the image it brings up of Tony standing there under the water, two or three fingers crooked inside himself, thinking about Jack.

He puts a third in and then yanks them out, because that’s a condition of this, this is not nice sex, and Tony wanted it that way or he wouldn’t have said the things he did. Tony may be able to play Jack, but when he's paying good attention Jack can read Tony like a book. He gets it. He’s in control now.

Jack slides the condom on.

He lets go of his neck and wraps that hand around Tony's hip again as he guides himself in. Jack holds onto him with both hands as he fucks him over the table.

Tony moans into the crook of his arm, lets out a soft gasp as Jack hits him with a hard stroke. “Yeah, like that -”

So Jack slows down for a second, almost pulling out of him entirely. Tony’s hand stretches out against the table, reaching for Jack. “Come on...”

“Harder?”

“You’re such a son of a bitch,” Tony spits, his voice still muffled by his sleeve. “Harder, yeah…”

And Jack does. He tries not to bring his anger to it but that’s impossible, sex with Tony is always tied up in their emotions of the moment, so he lets go, lets anger fill him and fucks him senseless on the table. Tony’s noises just spur him on. He tries to keep them from Jack but they grow in intensity and seem to come out of him without his permission, cries of pain, cries of pleasure, moans.

He keeps himself going for as long as he can. The fluttering of Tony's muscles against his cock almost sends him over the edge several times but he manages to stay hard, sliding his hand down and kneading at the flesh of Tony's ass, leaving deep red crescent marks where his nails press in.

When he finally comes it feels strange, like his orgasm was wrenched from him painfully, and he stays in Tony for a few moments, riding out the feeling. There’s an ache already settling in his pelvis from slamming his hips against Tony over and over.

He pulls out, carefully, running his hand up under Tony’s shirt to press his palm against his sweaty, trembling back, wanting to be close.

“Okay,” he mutters, stepping away and gathering up his clothes. “Let’s... if you want to do this for real, let’s go upstairs.”

“All right,” Tony replies after a beat, straightening up with ginger movements and pulling his boxers up over himself. He’s hard, which Jack has done nothing about yet.

They head upstairs and into the bedroom Jack has been sleeping in. Jack sits down on the edge of the bed and takes his shirt off. Tony takes his off too, with a knee resting on the bed between Jack’s legs for balance. When it goes over his head, his stitches are exposed, and Jack gives them a quick cursory look. He probably should have been more gentle, but he looks fine, he seems fine, he’s giving Jack that _look_...

Jack pulls Tony to himself and rolls onto his back on the bed so that he’s underneath him. He’s not quite getting hard again yet, but he feels the familiar stirrings as Tony’s warm hands move over his body, as his mouth presses against Jack's.

He slides his tongue in and Tony rolls his body against him. Jack slides a hand up his side and rubs his thumb over his nipple. He takes it between his thumb and forefinger and pinches, hurting him just a little. Tony’s chest jerks with an intake of air that Jack feels against his own mouth.

He moves his hand away, eyes close to useless in the darkness, going by feel, and down to the side of his ass where he starts to knead him like he was before, fingernails pressing against the soft skin there.

Jack skims his fingers along his ass and slides one into him. Tony moves in response, arching his back further, sucking at his lower lip. He brushes his finger against Tony’s sweet spot, or where he thinks it might be, his movements lubed by his own come.

Tony moves away from his mouth, starts kissing his neck, rolling his hips against Jack’s crotch. He can feel his blood rushing there again, a hesitant stiffening with not much behind it. His half century old body struggles to keep pace with his mind, which is some fifteen years in the past, remembering the first time they did this, on a similar bed in a similar dark room.

“Keep doing that,” he murmurs into Tony’s ear, but Tony already knows. He knows how to get what he wants out of Jack.

They kiss and pet each other for a few more minutes, until Jack is really getting hard and Tony’s neglected cock is dripping precome onto his stomach.

He doesn’t bother with a condom this time, just steers Tony back with one hand and Tony understands, adjusts the splay of his legs and takes Jack in his hand so he can guide him in.

When he does it’s easy, almost gentle, and he leans forward with a small exhale. Then he starts to fuck himself on Jack, his rhythm steady, just using him as a way to reach orgasm. Jack doesn’t move like he was before, just watches Tony and flicks his hips up when appropriate.

Tony presses his free hand into the mattress beside Jack’s chest. His eyes are closed and he’s riding him like it's all that matters. Jack just watches him, watches as his face darkens, becomes ruddier.

He lets out a sharp noise and Jack mutters “you all right?”

“Yeah,” he says, “no, that was good...” and seems to be trying to duplicate it, rolling his back. Jack’s surprised his muscles aren’t too stiff for the things he’s doing… give him another five years.

“What are you looking for?” he says as a look of frustration crosses Tony’s face.

“Nothing, just... don’t come yet...”

He rolls his hips again, lets out a moan that’s verging on a cry and begins moving on his cock with renewed enthusiasm.

“I’ll do my best,” Jack says, and Tony laughs, and then they’re both laughing. If only it could always be that easy.

After about a minute more of thrusting, Tony lets out a heavy sigh of frustration and pulls away from Jack. He has a momentary feeling of loss.

"What?"

Tony says nothing, just takes his hand - the one he had fingered him with earlier - and guides it forward. He curls two of Jack's fingers down into his palm and then slides the other two into himself, along with one of his own, pressing them down.

Jack is surprised. Tony's never _used_ him like this. He's aroused by it - his breathing picks up and he's leaking precome onto his thighs. Tony's dick remains untouched, flushed with blood and rock hard. Jack wants to finish him off by hand, but he can sense that for whatever reason Tony is adamant about getting off this way, from this stimulation, Jack's fingers or cock rubbing that spot that lies shallowly within himself.

"So, not big enough, huh," Jack banters, his voice more gravelly than usual from being so close to orgasm.

"Not enough pressure."

"Same thing."

Tony rolls his eyes, and then moans quietly. "Harder," he says, so soft he might as well have mouthed it, moving Jack's hand back and forth with his own. His chest is heaving; he's radiating heat.

When he comes he does so with a heavy, shuddering sigh, and all over Jack's stomach. They grasp at each other for a few moments, greedy for touch, and then Tony leans back to get his breath, brushing Jack's cock with his thigh as he does. They realize at the same time that he hasn't gotten off again yet.

Jack moves with renewed energy, grabbing Tony and rolling him over. Tony grabs a small pillow and stuffs it under his back. Jack slides into him easily.

He leans forward, resting his forehead on Tony's shoulder. Tony runs his hand through Jack's hair almost reassuringly, kisses his neck as Jack thrusts into him. There's an occasional flinch of pain from Tony and Jack keeps pausing, checking in with him, and he just moans _don't stop_. He seems miles away, with one of Jack's hands laying flat against his chest and the other cupping the side of his face.

When Jack comes, the orgasm is a slow burn, rising to the surface and spreading through his pelvis. He presses his mouth and nose to Tony’s throat and breathes him in. He _reeks_ of sex.

He doesn’t move for a while, and neither does Tony. Jack wants to stay inside of him for as long as possible. Doesn't want to leave this place they’ve created, this little haven from reality. So he just stays, between Tony’s legs, their stomachs flat against each other, his face against Tony’s throat.

Eventually Tony does get up, moving him aside, and disappears into the bathroom. Jack rolls onto his back and lies there, staring at the ceiling. Tomorrow morning they’ll get up and have to go into the FBI and at some point he’ll have to explain himself to Kim and -

It’s a mess. It’s been a mess and it’s going to stay a mess. Things are fucked up when they’re together and even more fucked up when they’re apart. There’s no accounting for it or hiding from it.

Tony comes back out and gets under the covers, and Jack sidles up behind him. He knows Tony doesn’t like being the small spoon but he pulls him in anyway, sliding his hands over his waist.


	15. 15

The next day comes sooner than Jack wants it to, and it’s a long, quiet drive to the FBI.

When they get in, Larry takes him aside immediately, murmuring “I need to talk to you in private”.

Jack follows him mindlessly, assuming there’s something he needs to clear up about his debriefing, but as soon as he steps inside Larry’s office, Larry pulls the door shut and says, “Clive Masters disappeared last night.”

It takes Jack a second. “Disappeared? You didn’t have him in custody?”

“We had him under surveillance in a safe house. After we picked him up, we came to an understanding, we had no reason to think he would want off the radar.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

He gives Jack a nervous look. “Some people... above me... are suspecting Tony might be involved.”

Jack laughs. "Above you... So, the President?"

“I’m not buying into it at all. It seems unlikely that after all he’s done for us, he’d be playing us like this. But it’s a tempting conclusion to draw, given the evidence.”

“Larry, he’s under constant surveillance.”

“That’s what I said, but they made a good point that he isn’t. Not in the safe house.”

“When he’s in the safe house he’s with me.”

Larry just looks at him.

Jack squints. “They think I’m involved?” he demands.

“They think he’s fleecing you.”

“Tony has no reason to do that. He’s fully burned all his bridges to criminals. It’s over. He’s done.”

“I can’t take that back to my people, Jack. I trust that you know him better than anyone, but I need something concrete.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“He’s on his way to holding. I'll get you in the room with him."

 

/

 

It’s a simple room like the one he interrogated Tony in a few years ago. A couple agents are already set up, looking with bored expressions through the one-way glass. They regard Jack with vague interest as he goes by.

“Hey,” Tony says when Jack walks in. He’s not handcuffed or anything.

“Hey. What’s going on?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “You know I’m fucked until they find him, right? I can’t prove I haven’t been in communication with him.”

“I know,” Jack says, sitting down across from him. He’s calm, almost amused. So much for a few days of peace. “So what can we do?”

“I could bring Clive in for them, if I had the chance. I’d need your help.” Tony leans forward in his chair, wincing with pain as he does. Jack’s cock twitches at that and he feels a respondent stab of disgust at himself.

“They wouldn’t let us operate on our own, Tony.”

“I don’t care if we have backup with us, as long as they were following our lead.”

“Jack,” Larry calls over the intercom.

Jack turns to the darkened pane of glass behind him. “Yeah.”

“I’m fine with that. But Tony, we are going to chip you.”

“All right, whatever you need to do.”

Jack walks back into the little anteroom where the agents and Larry are sitting and shuts the door carefully behind himself.

“Am I an idiot for being okay with this?” Larry gives him a plaintive look.

“No,” Jack replies.

“You know I don’t like to gamble.”

“I think gambling is your only option, Larry.”

“Yeah. Believe me, I know. You’ve had me backed into a corner for weeks now. You know, I liked both of you a lot better when you were out of sight, out of mind.”

“You could always send Tony back to Alaska.”

“Right.” He laughs. “Okay, let’s set up a detail. Who do you recommend for this?” he says to the agent next to him, who considers it.

“Uh, Chris and Frank are already with them.”

“Fine by me. I was going to say the same thing. Are you two okay with running point from back here?”

They both grunt in assent, but the agent who recommended Chris and Frank says, “Larry, you need to get more people on this at some point here. I am burned _out_.”

“I know, I know. Listen, get Tony’s statement on the record now, and have him meet us upstairs when he’s done.” Larry gets up and they both move for the door, right as Janis opens it.

“Oh, hi,” she says awkwardly. Larry jerks his chin and the three of them move out into the hallway.

“Um, Chloe’s demanding more computing power -”

“What’s she doing?” Larry seems to be avoiding direct eye contact with her.

“Combing through CTU’s backlogs, trying to find out more about Clive.”

“That shouldn’t take up that much data. We fit CTU New York on one server.”

“I’m sorry, I meant all CTUs. Including CTU Los Angeles, which is... huge. And she’s searching what we’ve compiled on Emerson’s gang. It’s taking up a lot of bandwidth, other agents are, uh, complaining.”

“Well, this is the problem when we have such a small group of people working on the essentials.”

“Do you want me to start clearing more people to work on this part of the case?”

Larry starts to respond, but Jack interrupts him.

“Tell Chloe to focus on what the FBI compiled for now,” he says. “We might have something about Clive hidden away somewhere, but it’s going to take too long to find in the time we have. I’m more comfortable banking this operation on Tony’s personal knowledge of his movements.”

Janis looks back and forth between them, but Larry doesn’t challenge that, so she nods and leaves.

“There’s a hell of a lot riding on Tony right now, Jack.”

“He can handle it,” Jack mutters.

Larry clears his throat. “No one thinks I should trust you. You’re lucky I have as much sway as I do. But I got tired of being two steps behind you. I still remember when you called me and you said you had the canisters. Up to that point I still didn’t even know how the hell you got ahold of a _gun_.”

Jack laughs.

“I was never trained to put all my faith in one guy.”

“Neither was I.”

“Right, and you’ve never even been able to. I’m sorry we keep letting you down, Jack.”

Jack smirks. “You’re wrong about that,” he says. “And you haven’t let me down yet so far.”

Larry smiles.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s get this op going.”

 

/

 

They spend the rest of the morning and afternoon combing through files. Tony knows a lot of things off the top of his head, safehouses Emerson owned, people who Clive might have hooked up with, but his personal knowledge of Clive is lacking. So is the FBI’s.

“He’s so small-time, according to all this,” Chloe says after a while, exasperated.

“He isn’t,” Tony says. He refuses to sit and has been bent over Chloe’s shoulder for at least an hour now. A while back he rested his hand on Jack’s thigh for balance and he hasn't moved it since. Nobody’s seemed to notice. “I mean, he is, but he’s a little rat, he knows a lot of people who move in higher circles. He’s the kind of guy you overlook because he’s not a climber, he’s small time, and one day he shoots you in the back when you’re walking to your car and makes three hundred grand off it.”

“Right, Chloe, we should be looking at Emerson again, I think,” Jack says.

Janis clears her throat from her seat at the opposite side of the conference table, where she’s tapping frantically at her laptop. “You sure you don’t want a chair, Tony?”

Tony looks at her for a long beat before responding, “No, thanks.”

“Okay.”

Larry walks by, trailed by a few agents, and knocks his knuckle on the glass of the conference room. Jack makes a noncommittal hand gesture. He nods and keeps walking.

“What’s your gut telling you?” Jack asks Tony. “That safehouse in Chinatown, right?”

“Yeah. It’s got the least escape routes, but he’s not going to expect to have to escape. And he doesn’t know I know about it. Emerson bought it before I came on.”

Jack tries not to bristle at every mention of Emerson. He tries to remind himself that that gangly British fuck is only dead because of Tony’s loyalty toward him.

Chris clears his throat. “Let’s just hit it, then. Worst case scenario he’s not there and we wasted some time and manpower. Best case scenario, he’s there and we grab him.”

“Okay, let’s get suited up,” Jack says.

“We’ll keep looking.” Chloe gets up and walks to the other end of the table, sitting down next to Janis.

“Don’t die,” she adds.

Janis grins and Frank lets out a little bark of a laugh. It’s the first noise Jack's heard him make all day.

 

/

 

They back the SUV up to the alley closest to the apartment building the safehouse is in and set up a command post. They brought another agent along, Jesse, who kind of reminds Jack of a more jovial, less nervous Curtis - but he’s on comms, not field ops.

Tony has been chipped like a dog. He sat there while a tech flicked his upper arm and then injected him, with Tony looking into middle space in obvious annoyance, like for him this was the indignity of being presumed a criminal symbolized in one act. Jack caught his eye and smiled at him while the syringe was being emptied and a faint smirk passed over his face in response.

He doesn't think Tony is unhappy right now, just frustrated. The previous night was a huge release of tension and he can feel it in both of them, even now as he tightens up Tony's vest for him. The muscles in his back have slackened. His posture is less tense. He keeps his hands on his hips, though, as they form a circle to do a last minute comms check.

As for Jack, he still has an edge of euphoria, and having a mission to focus on is making him feel even clearer. He'd never admit it, but the field is the one place he ever feels like he belongs.

Chris and Frank hook themselves up and make their way into the building while Jack and Tony flank the only exit.

After a minute or so of listening to them shuffle papers and furniture around, Jack flips his comm onto mute so he can talk. Tony follows suit. “Kim would kill me if she knew I was in the field,” he mutters.

Tony laughs.

“We just told her last night we’re done with field work.”

“Jack, she doesn’t have to know anything. And both of us could do this kind of stuff in our sleep.”

“How did Clive even get past their surveillance?”

“They’re short-staffed and he’s smart, in a kind of -”

Tony winces and grabs at his waist. He sinks into a squat.

“You all right?”

“Yeah," he snorts, "just this hole in my side.”

“Need anything?”

“Just painkillers.”

“All clear,” Chris says in Jack’s ear.

They both take their comms off mute.

“Nothing?”

“No sign of anyone being here in months.”

“Damnit,” Jack hisses.

“We have a few more places on the list, Bauer, don’t get too nervous yet. We’ll meet you back at the car.”

Jack looks down at Tony, who's starting to look a little on edge.

“We’ll find him,” he says, holding his hand out. Tony grabs it and pulls himself to his feet.

 

/

 

When they get back to the FBI Chloe accosts them outside the conference room, aglow with excitement.

“I found a safehouse under Vic Mendez,” she says.

Tony squints at her.

“What?” says Jack.

“Emerson bought a place under one of Tony’s identities. We’d only run a search for properties under Tony Almeida, and obviously nothing came up. But I got a hit on Vic Mendez.”

“I don’t even remember what place that is.”

“It’s on 12th Street.”

“Okay, back out the door then,” says Chris.

Frank slips his jacket back on.


	16. 16

The neighborhood is awful, creepy and silent and foreboding, and gets Jack’s neck hair standing on end.

Jesse sets up in the street behind the house and they head to up to the house in pairs. Chris and Frank take point, knocking on the back door and shouting to announce themselves, then knocking the lock off and walking in. Jack and Tony take up the rear quietly.

Chris and Frank declare the first floor swept and head upstairs.

Tony checks around for anything left behind but Jack creeps through the living room, gears turning. The second he puts it together - he heard a TV on when they pulled up to the house, and now it’s muted - a gun muzzle kisses the back of his skull.

“Right,” says Clive. “Let’s put the piece down.”

Tony’s out of the kitchen in a flash and Clive turns Jack to him, so he sees his predicament.

“Set your gun down too,” Clive says. “Kick it over.”

Tony obliges.

“See, I was hoping I could get a gun on Jack,” Clive continues. “I’ve been putting it together. I know you two used to have it off, and then I was wondering, why would Tony go to all this trouble for someone he hasn’t seen in years? And then, the key thing is, I thought about it. And mind you I was stressed at the time so I could be wrong. But when I came in through the window, I could have sworn you were sharing a bed…”

Tony’s unreadable.

“So, I think Jack means a little more to you than your dignity,” Clive says. “And if there’s one thing I know about you it’s how soft you are on whoever you’re fucking. And if there’s something else I know, it’s that no way in hell am I getting roped into playing maid bitch to the FBI and ratting for them for the rest of my born days. I’ll do it proper and rat to criminals, thanks. What’s going to happen, Almeida, is you’re going to let me walk out that door, and I will get in y -”

There’s a thump from upstairs and Clive looks up for half a second. Jack takes that window to duck away from him and stomp his foot, crushing at least two toes judging by his howl of pain. The gun goes off, discharging harmlessly into a wall. With one smooth motion, Jack relieves Clive of his piece and points it at him.

“Fucking right,” Clive spits, “at least you can pick them, Almeida. Tell me, when he comes in your mouth, do you swallow or spit it out? Because I alw -”

He’s again interrupted, this time by Tony lunging across the room, throwing him up against the wall and clawing at his face. Jack rushes to him, but Tony heaves Clive to the ground and gives him a good kick to the ribs before Jack can intervene.

“Tony,” he hisses, pressing a palm to his chest and stepping forward, pushing him away.

Tony’s attention snaps to Jack. His cheeks are flushed and his chest is heaving. Behind them, Frank and Chris are descending the stairs.

“This is what he wants,” Jack says. “He’s a manipulator, like you said. You just fucked yourself over more than you did him damage.”

“Tell them I had to,” Tony says quietly. His heart is going wild under Jack’s palm.

Chris rushes over to Clive, pulling out handcuffs. “What happened?” he demands, as Frank radios in to Jesse.

“I will,” Jack practically mouths, “but get ahold of your emotions.”

He turns to Chris. “Clive must have been hiding, laying in wait. He jumped me, put a gun to my head. I managed to duck away and then he jumped Tony.”

“Aw, he’s full of shit,” Clive moans through his fingers, which are pressed to his bleeding mouth. Chris shushes him.

“Well, this’ll make Larry’s day,” he says. “And it should make yours, Almeida. You just managed to weasel yourself back off the President’s shitlist.”

Tony just nods.

 

/

 

All along Constitution Avenue is gridlock, and they both sit in silence. When they pull into the garage below headquarters Jack reaches over and rests his hand on Tony’s thigh, squeezes him gently. Tony stares out the window.

 

/

 

They take an elevator straight to the floor they’ve been working on. When they step back into the conference room everyone in it beams at them; Larry gives a huge sigh of relief.

“Clive’s in holding, sir,” says Chris.

“Good, let him stay there awhile. Good work, everyone. Bauer, Almeida.”

Jack nods.

“Tony, can I talk to you alone for a minute?” Larry says, getting up and coming over.

Tony nods and they both slip out of the room. Jack watches them go. He knows Larry’s just going to apologize and send him home for the day, but that makes him uneasy. He doesn’t like Tony being out of his sight.

“Jack,” Jesse says.

His attention snaps back to the room. Chloe’s looking at him curiously.

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to debrief now or later? It shouldn’t take long, we’re just trying to get a picture of everything that’s happened the last two weeks and we need all the pieces together…”

“Now’s fine with me.”

True to Jesse’s word, it’s a short debrief in a sad little room with flickering fluorescents on what is fast becoming known as the “Jack Bauer wing” of the FBI - an area now only persons and agents of a certain security status have access to. He walks out, lost about what to do, and wanders around trying to find Larry out of habit.

“Hey,” he says when he runs into him a few minutes later, walking away from a printer.

“Hey, Jack," Larry says distractedly, arranging papers. "Everything on record?”

“Yep.”

He’d lied about why Tony smacked Clive, but no one’s going to care. No one would believe Clive if he said otherwise. Still and all, Larry might believe him if he said Tony and Jack were sleeping together…

“Did you send Almeida home?”

“Yeah, he was a little off. Did you want to head back too?”

Jack laughs. “I could go for another twelve hours at least. Just not sure what you need my help with.”

“Well, I should update you on what’s going on overseas. Suvarov got on a private flight back to Russia before he could be locked down, and we’re having a hell of a time getting the Russians to let him go.”

“So he can be turned over to the ICC.”

“Yep. But they’re throwing up all kinds of red tape. We think they may not even know where he is, honestly. President Hassan is trying to throw her weight around, but she doesn’t have much political capital yet. Unfortunately neither does Hayworth. We - I mean, the intelligence community in general - have spies in Russia right now trying to locate Suvarov so we can put some pressure on them, but no luck so far.”

“So you need from me…”

“Well, two thirds of the building is working on that. Same with CIA, DoD, everybody. I wouldn’t normally be asking you for your help on something this broad considering why we brought you in, but I did technically hire you as a consultant, and you do have a lot of valuable experience here. So if you could work with Chloe on sifting through some of the data…”

“Definitely. I’ll go meet with her now.”

“Thanks, Jack.”

He walks away thinking he should feel tired, put-upon, manipulated - and he does - but there’s a blossoming feeling in the pit of his stomach, that familiar roar of rage and adrenaline.

Suvarov killed Renee.

 

/

 

When Jack steps out of the FBI six hours later, his eyes are burning from poring over screens and his body aches from being put to use for so long. He almost dozes off in the car but catches himself and busies himself with the burner phone they gave him.

He catches up on the news as soon as he gets home, standing in front of the couch and eating a dry baloney sandwich at the same time. Nothing new, lots of conjecture. He flips channels. Golf, _Law and Order: Criminal Intent_ , laptop commercial. Basketball. Weather.

The house is quiet. As he climbs the stairs a sense of unease rises in his chest.

He checks the bedroom Tony’s supposed to be in. He’s not there, of course, so he opens the door to his own next.

Tony’s curled up on the bed facing away from the door. Definitely breathing, and he stirs when he hears footsteps. Jack’s pulse eases and he lets out a breath.

“Tony,” he says.

More stirring. Tony sits up, rubs his eyes, mumbles something.

“What’s up?”

“Didn’t mean to fall asleep... What time is it?”

“Quarter past ten.”

“Did you just get back?”

Jack sits on the edge of the bed. “Yeah.”

Tony studies Jack’s face. “Did he have you looking for Suvarov?”

“There’s not much else to do. Can we talk about last night?”

“What about it?”

“I just wanted to apologize.”

Tony nods slowly. “Yeah. Me too.”

“I mean, Kim’s an adult. And I know you two have built a certain type of relationship where a lot of the time she was coming to you for information about me because I was keeping her in the dark. It’s not fair of me to think that’s going to change just because the conversation was about sex and not my personal safety.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Tony says. “It was about your safety. And in my defense, Jack, it wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have.”

Jack looks down at his hands. “You didn’t have to get me out of that alley.”

“But I did.”

“Why?”

Tony shakes his head and scoffs. “A million reasons.”

“Why are you so hard for me to understand?” Jack says plaintively. It comes out almost accusatory. He hopes Tony doesn’t hear it that way.

Tony heaves a long sigh. “Because you think I’m like you. But you don’t get it, that we’ve never wanted the same things.”

Jack notes the past tense. “What do you want now?”

He shrugs. “To live through tomorrow. And a beer would be nice.”

There’s a stretch of silence.

“Listen… they’ll find Suvarov in a couple days, Jack, if not a few hours.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I can tell he’s weighing on you now that you’ve had a second to stop and take a breath.”

“Yeah.” Jack fiddles with his watch and tries not to think about Hassan. Or Renee. Or any of it, really. “You know, it feels so good, letting go. Just really… letting your rage take over, for once. It feels clean. It makes sense.”

“Until the rage goes away,” Tony says. “Until there comes that point when you wake up and you don’t know what the fuck you’ve been doing, or who you even are. And then you have to face the consequences.”

He sighs. “You know, the one thing I didn’t want to do was drag Chloe down with me, and I did anyway. No matter how hard I try, it’s just…”

Jack shakes his head.

“Heller said I was cursed, once. I believed him when he said it. Later on I got pissed, I thought he was just trying to keep me from Audrey. But sometimes I think he might have been right.”

“You’re not cursed, Jack. You’ve made a lot of enemies.”

“Yeah, I’m good at that.”

Tony gives him a soft look. “Come to bed,” he says.

Only when he says that does Jack realize how exhausted he is. He peels his clothes off down to his boxers and gets under the covers.

The bed smells a little like sex and a lot like Tony. He finds it comforting.

Above them, the curtains flutter with a slight breeze. Tony slides his arm over Jack’s waist.


	17. 17

The next morning brings a chill into the bedroom. Jack wakes up turned around and having slid down the bed some, with his face pressed to Tony’s stomach and Tony’s hand in his hair.

He wonders for a moment why he’s up. It feels early, and Tony is still sleeping soundly. He realizes his cell phone is ringing. He leans over and snatches it off of the bedside table.

“Yeah?”

“Hey Jack, it’s Larry.”

“What’s up?”

Tony’s waking up, stirring beside him.

“Chloe wants your help. An agent on our team in Russia tracked Suvarov to a safehouse in Omsk. They had to call for backup and while they were waiting, a truck peeled out. It had IRK diplomat plates - number designation 168.”

Jack sits up straighter. _“What?”_

“It’s a ploy. Whoever’s got him, they’re little nationalist weasels. They want us to think the IRK is involved at a state level so we’ll disseminate that to the media, and they can muddy the waters and trash Dalia’s credibility at the same time they give us a red herring as a lead.”

“Right. So you’ve got plates?”

“Yeah. We have to assume they ditched the car or switched plates, but yeah. This was about a half hour ago. Anyway, she needs your help working through the traffic footage. Needs someone who speaks Russian, has intimate knowledge of Russian streets, has prior knowledge of Suvarov, and someone she has a shorthand with -”

Jack is already out of bed, pulling his pants on. “I’m on my way.”

“See you soon.”

He ends the call and texts Chris to be in the car waiting.

_Roger,_ Chris texts back.

Tony is ready almost as fast as he is, even though he only heard one half of the conversation.

Jack gazes at him as he slides his jacket on, remembering the previous night. 

“What’s up?” Tony says, noticing his stare. He has his hand on the doorknob.

Jack shakes his head.

They leave the house. Chris and Frank are waiting.

 

/

 

The air is tense in the FBI, and Jack catches a few looks as they head to the elevator. He wonders if he was brought up in a briefing.

When they reach their designated floor, Chloe intercepts them. “How much did Larry tell you?” she asks as they head toward the conference room.

“Everything up to what you knew at 4:45. Anything else?”

“We’ve just been going over the footage.”

“Do you have CCTV from the entire surrounding area?”

“That’s what we’ve been looking at, but it cuts out at one point on a sidestreet and then the car disappears off the radar completely.” Chloe pushes the doors open for them but Jack has stopped in his tracks, thinking.

Tony yawns discreetly into his wrist as he sits down next to Janis, who moves her laptop so he can look over her shoulder.

“Any overpasses in the area?”

Chloe shakes her head.

“So where’s the car?”

“Well, that’s what we’re working on, Jack,” she snaps.

He gives her a look and pulls out a chair for himself. “Okay, so take me through this again.”

They watch the video several times, jumping from camera to camera, covering the car the whole way, until it pulls out of a camera’s view down a side street. But when they jump to the next camera on that street, there’s nothing.

He shakes his head. “How would they have disappeared completely? The timestamp adds up. The shadows don’t change.”

“I’m going to try to see if I can find any evidence of tampering,” Chloe says. “They must have fudged the timestamp somehow.”

“Need any help?” says Janis.

“Not with this.” Chloe seems to struggle for a moment with sounding polite. “If you could take over the decompression of the CTU files on my E, that would save me some computing power -”

“Got it,” Janis says, grabbing her external hard drive and plugging it into her own computer.

Jack sits.

The four of them work for the next half an hour, digging around in Russian files, hitting the occasional block that Chloe has to code around. Jack’s eyes start to glaze over. Russian has never been his favorite language to read, and it’s been years since he’s worked with computers like this.

Finally he gets up and, stretching, wanders out into the hallway in search of more coffee.

He bumps into someone and after apologizing and refocusing his vision, realizes it’s Felix.

“Hey,” he snaps.

Felix looks at him nervously. “Uhh,” he says. “Hey there.”

“You’re FBI? You were a plant too?”

“Yeah,” he says, grimacing. “Actually, I’m not even supposed to be on this floor… Larry thought it would just piss you off.”

“Yeah. It does,” Jack says.

“Well… We _had_ to maintain Matveyev’s cover. I mean, that was the key goal overall. No hard feelings, please. I’m just a dude doing my job, and you scare the shit out of me.”

Jack sighs. “What’s your real name?”

“No, it really is Felix.”

Jack stares him down.

He hesitates. “Uh, it’s Eddie.”

“Jesus.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Eddie says, “I did a little acting in high school? I was pretty good.”

“That’s zero consolation. Thanks. Where can I get a cup of coffee?”

Eddie gestures around the corner. Jack follows the gesture to a vending machine, pours himself a sad cup of weak coffee into a tiny styrofoam cup, and heads back into the conference room.

He pulls up the footage again and goes over it for what must be the fortieth time.

Janis leaps up in her seat, startling everyone.

“Wait, wait,” she says. “Hold on. I think… Hold on. I think I know what happened. I think -”

She looks up. Everyone is staring at her.

“Okay, so, it looks like they continue onto that side street, right? But what if…”

She’s hitting keys so fast her glasses slide down her nose. “Yes. Yes!”

“What?” Tony demands.

“Look! There they are!”

They all gather behind her. It’s very grainy, low-res footage of guys hunched over behind a car.

“I don’t -” Chloe says.

“This is dashcam footage from a car in the alley off the side street. I pulled it out of the cloud and enhanced by a _lot..._ Listen, they never continued on that side street. They pretended to, and then they reversed and pulled into the alley, where there’s no CCTV. Right after that they got into the camera and looped footage from seconds before they pulled onto the sidestreet over top of them turning around and going into the alley. Then, they got out and switched the plates.”

“You need to grab those plates,” Jack says.

“I’m on it, I’m on it. I’m trying to find the next CCTV camera past here -”

She pulls it up, and there the car is. She taps the keyboard frantically, zooming in.

“Wow. We have ‘em.”

As she says that, Janis is already dialing Larry, who picks up instantly.

“Get it out to all our agents in the field, they switched their plates, I have the new ones. A101EX. I’ll keep tracking them on CCTV.” She hangs up once he confirms. “Can I get help with that?”

Chloe looks disgruntled at being relegated to “help”, but sits back down at her computer. Jack and Tony follow suit.

Jack has a building sense of grim excitement.

_We have him._

 

_/_

 

The following hour feels like five of them.

Several agents join them in the conference room, but even with seven people combing through CCTV, they often backtrack over streets that have already been looked at by someone else. Finally Chloe slams her laptop down, leaves the room, drags in a giant whiteboard and has Frank stand there and take down street names as they yell them out.

It’s Tony who ends up tracking the car to where it's parked as of forty-five seconds ago. He doesn’t seem all that excited about it. Janis and a few of the other agents flee the room to disseminate the information.

Jack immediately pulls the street up on his own computer, and there it is, right outside of a crumbling, brutalist apartment building.

He stands up and leaves the room. He needs a glass of water, or at the very least something in his stomach that isn't caffeine.

He runs into Larry on his way out.

“Damnit,” Larry says. He jerks his chin toward the conference room. “Where did they all go? I told Janis on the phone I was coming to meet you guys -”

Before he can even finish the sentence, the entire hallway is engulfed in a flurry of activity. An agent Jack has never seen before runs up to Larry with a sat phone. “I have one of our guys in the area on the line, he’s assembling a team right now. They’re going to - uh, uh, fuck. Hold on. Okay, they’re setting up a command post in an alley across the street.”

The agent takes the sat phone away from his ear and tunes into his surroundings. He spots Jack and his mouth falls open. “Wait, Jack _Bauer?”_

Larry gives Jack an apologetic look and corrals the agent away, shooing him as he cries out, “At _headquarters,_ Moss?”

Jack - careful to avoid everyone rushing around - gets a cup of water from a cooler and runs his hand through his hair.

In the back of his mind, he’s starting to wonder what’s going to happen when this is all over. When Larry can’t justify them being in D.C. anymore.

Jack turns around and sees Tony leaving the conference room. Without thinking about it, he follows him.

Tony disappears into a small room. Jack slips in behind him.

Tony looks up in surprise. He’s sitting on the edge of a table a printer is on, with his feet on the seat of a chair underneath him.

“Hey,” Jack says.

“Hey,” Tony says. “What’s up?”

“Just checking on you.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Yeah, actually, I’m doing a whole shitload of terrorism in here, can you come back later?”

“Come on, come on...”

The room is very dim. Jack approaches Tony. Behind them, a fax machine whirs.

He slides his hands over Tony's thighs and thinks about kissing him, but just leans his head against Tony's chest instead. Tony's hand comes up and strokes his hair. Jack lets out a deep breath against his shirt. There's a deep comfort in the smell of him, which has barely changed in the last fifteen years. Sharp and sweet, like cloves or peppermint.

He raises a hand to Tony's neck, resting his palm so it covers his old scar, and Tony brings Jack closer, wrapping his free hand around his waist. Jack lets out a soft sigh. He's content, here in the darkness.

Tony presses soft kisses to Jack's shoulder. Jack continues to stroke his thigh, moving his thumb in gentle clockwise circles.

The door creaks open slowly, giving them enough time to separate mostly, but not fully.

It's Chloe. She gives Jack a searching look.

Tony pushes Jack's hand off his thigh.

"Um. They're moving in on the building right now," she says. "I thought you might want to watch."

"Yeah, absolutely," Jack says, moving for the door. "Thanks, Chloe."

"Yep," she says, holding it open. Jack steps into the hallway and turns to Tony, who's a lot slower to get moving and seems aggrieved at the interruption.

Back in the conference room, there's about twenty people crammed around the table. A giant monitor is displaying a headcam view that's looking down a deserted hallway. Doors being kicked in and echoes of several voices saying "clear" can be heard. The agents regroup in the hallway and someone else takes point.

They head up the staircase.

At the top of the stairs there's an armed subject who's quickly taken down with a hand over his mouth by the agent at point. Whoever's wearing the headcam rushes past him and knocks open the first door in the hallway.

Several Russian men and one woman, all wearing suits, come into view. There's several shouts of anger from them. One of the men goes for his gun and is double tapped before he clears his holster. He slumps to the ground dead. The headcam agent moves further into the apartment. The woman and the remaining two men have their hands up.

The agent asks where Suvarov is in Russian. The woman shakes her head and glares.

He points a pistol at her. "Где?"

She shakes her head again. An agent slips behind her and tries to kick in the door on the far wall, with no luck.

“Он здесь?” the agent with the headcam demands. “В другой комнате?”

_“Правительство блядь,_ ” she spits.

“Nice,” he replies, keeping the gun on her.

Another agent joins the one at the far wall with a small battering ram. After a false start, they smash the door in. The woman starts swearing theatrically in Russian.

Jack leans back in his seat.

The headcam agent flattens himself against a wall.

In the chaos and clouds of dust it’s hard to see what’s going on. They drag one man out, and then another. Headcam agent walks forward slowly, shining a flashlight through the soot in the air.

The light hits the second man. Someone grabs his hair and jerks his head backward. The flashlight illuminates his face.

It’s Suvarov.

A cheer goes up from almost everyone in the room. Jack realizes he’s been holding his breath, and that he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.


	18. 18

 

When the dust settles and they're finally alone, Jack, Chloe and Tony retake the conference room, discussing what method of execution they’d personally favor for Suvarov and making gallows jokes about putting brain-damaged Logan on the stand.

There's a knock on the door and Larry pokes his head in.

“Jack,” he says, beckoning. “I need a word with you real quick.”

Jack is up and on his heels with speed. Larry brings him into the elevator, up a floor, and then into his office.

“Shut that behind you, would you?”

He sounds friendly enough, but when he sits down behind his desk his smile is grim. Jack sits down across from him with his eyebrows raised.

“I'm going to do something for you,” Larry says.

“Okay," Jack says cautiously.

Larry steeples his fingers. “Next week, I'm going to send you out to consult for our field office in Los Angeles.”

Jack sits up a little straighter and rubs his fingers back and forth against his palm, wondering what the catch could be.

“That way, you can be near Kim and her family, and you can work in familiar territory…”

“Sounds great.”

“Right?”

“Yeah. Uh, just - what about Tony?”

Larry shrugs. “What about him?”

“He's not going to go back to Los Angeles.”

“Well... that's going to be your battle with him. As far as we're concerned, the two of you are a package deal. He's admitted to aiding and abetting you, we're not just going to let him walk. Even just for his own safety, we're not going to do that.”

Jack lets out a sigh. “Yeah. Listen, Larry, thanks. I really appreciate it.”

“Well, you guys have been a big help to us.”

“Not that big of one.”

“You got Chloe to work with us. Without either of you, I doubt we would have found Suvarov as quickly, and who knows what could have happened in the meantime? I’m willing to chalk today up as a huge victory and leave it at that.”

“Yeah, well,” Jack says, standing up and offering his hand to shake. Larry gives him a small smile and shakes it. “You can be proud. You’re running a good outfit here.”

“I’ve tried to change,” Larry says, shaking his head. “I’ve tried to… you know. To listen more. To embrace some more unconventional methods. I wish Renee were here to see it.”

Jack doesn’t know what to say to that. It’s Larry’s fault she isn’t, but it’s his own fault, too.

“Yeah, she should be,” he says, hoping it doesn’t come out too chilly.

There’s a knock at the door and they look over. Janis steps in.

“Langley’s on the phone for you,” she says. “Sorry, Jack.”

“No problem, we’re done here anyway,” Jack says, getting up. Larry waves goodbye to them as he picks up the handset on his desk.

Outside, Janis gives him an uneasy look. “You guys were talking about Renee?”

Jack adjusts his watch and shakes his head. “Not really.”

“Okay,” she says, in a strange, clipped way.

“Listen, I don’t know what’s going on with you two,” he says. “And I don’t exactly care, either. But whatever it is, you should just talk to him.”

Janis sighs. “Yeah, you’re right,” she says. “And you should take your own advice, by the way.”

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

“Mm-hmm. We talked, you know.”

“About me? With Tony? I doubt it.”

“Okay... Not specifically about you. But there was a subtext of you.”

“Great. Am I done for the day?”

“I guess so,” she says. “Unless you guys want to come get a drink with me and a couple other analysts…”

He gives her a double take, and she gives him a sly grin.

“Kidding. I know you’re not exactly back to that level of anonymity yet.”

“Yeah, we’ll see. Give it a year.”

“You think you’ll be back here at all?”

“Who knows. We’ll see.”

“Chloe’s staying in the area for now.”

Jack sighs. “I figured.”

“She thinks it’s safer for her and her family.”

“Yeah. She’s right about that.”

Janis gives him a lop-sided smile. “Must be tough, being back in the game like this.”

“I’ll live,” he says. It comes out chilly, but he claps her on the shoulder and gives her the smile back. “Good work today, by the way.”

“You too, Bauer.”

They part ways and Jack finds Chris further down the hallway, pacing the narrow pace of a former military man.

“We done for the day?” Chris says, shoving his hands in his pockets. They’re both standing in shadow, swallowed by the blue stillness of a recently busy thoroughfare suddenly abandoned.

“Looks like it,” Jack says.

 

/

 

By the time they’ve returned to the safehouse, there’s an unseasonable humidity in the air. A thunderstorm looms on the horizon. Jack chews on the inside of his cheek as he walks into the house.

Tony pulls two miniature bottles of wine out of his pockets and sets them down with a small clatter on the counter. Jack, who’s flicking through channels, gives him a questioning look.

“Stole them out of someone’s minifridge when everyone was running around.”

Jack just shakes his head.

He should bring up the impending move to L.A. _now,_ but it’s been a long day. Instead, he holds his hand out. Tony tosses him one of the bottles and he opens it and takes a long sip, obliterating half of it.

“What did Larry need to talk to you about?” Tony says, walking over to the couch and picking up the remote.

Sometimes Jack finds it irritating just how attuned they are to each other’s subterfuge.

“What’s going to be next for us. He, uh…”

Tony interrupts him by holding a hand up and turns the volume up on the TV, which is playing CNN.

“- into U.S. custody earlier today, following days of tension between the United States and Russia regarding his whereabouts and a protracted search effort by American agents in Russia. President Suvarov will be -”

Tony mutes it. “Never mind,” he says. “Thought they might have something new.”

Jack steps behind him and slides his hands over his hips, pressing his lips to Tony’s neck. “Let’s go to bed.”

Tony looks at his watch. “It’s 7:30.”

“Let’s go to bed anyway.”

“Okay, grandpa,” he says, but the way he says it is kittenish and lets his hand brush over the back of Jack’s, trailing over scar tissue. “I want to shower.”

They head upstairs and part ways, Jack walking into the bedroom and sitting on the bed, sliding his palms over his thighs.

He lays back and looks at the ceiling, watching the fan spin. It feels like it’s been two years since he staggered bleeding through the streets of New York.

What is he going to say to Tony? What does he ever say to Tony? The heart of their relationship is to be united against a common enemy, or, lacking one, to turn against each other. The common enemy should be the FBI, should be the government in general, but the second Jack says Los Angeles, the pendulum is going to swing - heavily, inevitably - in his direction.

Tony’s done a lot for him in recent days, but Jack never once asked him to. More than that, he resisted Tony at multiple turns, objected to the cloak and dagger of it all, suggested he just turn himself in. At any point, Tony could have handed him over and been lauded as a hero.

Which, of course, is the least of what Tony wants. Tony wanted to slip out of the shadows, snatch Jack from the jaws of death, and pull him back into quiet, dark oblivion with him. Jack imagines the two of them living out a quiet life in Alaska.

He’s sure Tony’s imagined it.

Tony should know better. Tony should know Jack cannot, will not, slip away. He is terminally involved, he will always be dragged out of the shadows. At this point it’s easier to give in. If he wants to be in Kim and Teri’s lives, he _has_ to give in.

Tony’s lack of family hangs over everything. He’s a free agent with a crater in the middle of his life, the decades on either side flapping useless in the breeze.

He feels sometimes like the knife in Tony’s chest. Not the one who did the harm, but the thing that the harm was done with. No matter how many times Tony tells him to, he will never forgive himself for Michelle’s death. He can’t.

Not hers, not David’s. Nor for what happened to Audrey, or Renee. Not for what happened to his wife, not for the cloud of terror that’s hung over his daughter’s life for half of the time she’s been alive.

This is the beginning of making it up to Kim. He can be by her side, or at least near her. He can watch over her family. He can make sure the cancer of his recent decisions stays within him and only him.

The shower stops. Jack sits up.

Tony walks in wearing just boxers, toweling his head off. He tosses the towel in their pile of dirty clothes and kneels in front of Jack, starting to undo his belt without a word.

Jack lets Tony get his pants halfway down his legs. Then he stills him with a touch to his arm. “I need to tell you something, first.”

“Jack...” Tony says, looking incredulous.

“Trust me, you’re not gonna be happy if I wait.”

Tony gets up. Instead of sitting next to Jack, he hovers over him, arms folded. “All right. What’s up?”

Jack lets out a sigh. “Larry and I talked about what he's going to have us doing next…”

“I mean, I wasn’t expecting that to be good news.”

“He wants us to go to Los Angeles, and consult for the field office there.”

The chill comes over Tony top-down. First his eyes narrow, then his jaw tenses and his arms pull tighter around him. He cracks a knuckle while staring down at Jack, and finally he takes a step back from him and leans against the dresser.

“No,” he says. Very simple.

“You don’t have a choice, Tony.”

“I don’t? That’s news to me.”

“You don’t have any _real_ choice.”

“Any reason for me not to just stay here?”

“One, the two of us are a package deal, and I'm going. Two, this is contingent on us being more valuable as assets than as… well, liabilities. Part of that is our combined knowledge.”

“I know D.C.”

“Not as well as you know L.A.”

“Don’t try and sell me on this,” Tony spits. “You know you can’t. I know what you’re counting on, Jack. That I’ll be angry at first, and then I’ll come to terms with how I can’t do anything about it and I’ll give in. And then eventually, I’ll get over it. Then you can have everything you want. You can be the big guy again, the guy who knows better than all of these stupid schmucks, you can see Kim whenever you want, and have me at home when you want to put your dick to use.”

“Do you _really_ think I see it like that?”

Tony makes a gesture, either one of giving up or one of not knowing.

“You’re suddenly acting like I’ve been playing you since day one. I didn’t know any of this was going to happen. I’m just rolling with the punches, Tony! I don’t have the energy or will to _plan_ anymore, I just get knocked around like a fucking pinball all day. You think I want to go back to Los Angeles? You think nothing ever happened to me there?”

“You don’t get it, Jack,” Tony says, and gets up in Jack’s space again, leans down to hiss in his face, “ _you do not get it_. I haven’t been in Los Angeles since the day Michelle died and Emerson’s crew took me in. I haven’t set a foot there in seven years.”

Jack gives him a long look. “Not once?”

“Not once,” Tony says. His voice is chilly.

“Okay… okay.”

This, he understands.

He’s struck by the familiar urge to pull Tony to him, to smother him in understanding, to crush the defiance out of him like a giant snake. _I know, I know, I know how you feel._

He doesn’t truly, he’s beginning to realize. Their lives wend in and out of each other, they overlap, but Tony is not him just seven years behind. Tony is Tony. Jack has been hurt in such large and overwhelming ways that he drags his suffering over the suffering of his loved ones like a blanket of lead, he wants their pain to match up perfectly.

He doesn’t pull Tony to him. Tony walks away and begins putting his clothes on.

“I know I don’t have a choice,” Tony says, not turning to Jack to say it, making him strain to hear him. “So... I don’t want to think about this right now.”

“You don’t have to.”

Tony grunts as he pulls a shirt on. He leaves the room. Jack hears footsteps down the hallway, and a door closing and locking. The other bedroom.


	19. 19

Jack is shocked to see how bad Tony gets when they touch down in L.A. Michelle confided in him somewhat when he fell apart after being in prison, but she was a private and stoic person. Even when she started to feel their marriage was becoming hopeless, Jack could tell she was keeping most of the gory details from him. Likely out of loyalty to Tony, and likely somewhat out of embarrassment as well.

Tony and Jack get placed in a small two bedroom rambler on Wellworth Avenue, in the shadow of the FBI L.A. buildings.

They’re leased a government-issue older Chevy with tinted windows, and they get a small stipend, as well as equipment. Kim and her family are still waiting in D.C. while agents perform a month’s worth of nightly stakeouts of the little single family house she and Stephen just paid off, making sure no one is lurking at that address.

The L.A. ADIC, Thompson, calls Jack hours after their plane lands and explains their timeline to him.

For the first four weeks, while the media situation blows over, Jack will work from home, sifting through the files they recovered from Suvarov by hand. His intimate knowledge of the situation, Thompson says, can net the ICC valuable evidence that might otherwise get skipped over. After that, he’ll start coming in to consult full time.

So Jack stays at home, and Tony goes out for groceries and runs errands, and at first he begrudgingly agrees to read through paperwork after Jack finishes combing through it, to check if he missed anything.

This works fine for about three days until Tony starts hitting up the liquor store.

When he starts going, he’s subtle about it. He’ll come home, put everything away in the refrigerator, and then he’ll “go to bed” with a bottle in his hand. They’ve been sleeping in separate bedrooms ever since the night Jack told him they were moving.

He knows better than to rush Tony back into intimacy. He sometimes touches him, on the shoulder or on the leg, and Tony doesn’t duck away from him in those early days.

And then Tony starts “going to bed” earlier and earlier. Jack can’t stand the idea of him lying in the dark, drinking, miserable, alone, when they’re only a matter of feet away from each other.

Once he starts spiraling, Tony just picks up speed. The thing is, he doesn’t have the patterns of an addict the way Jack did. He has the attitude of the walking wounded, someone self-medicating a gaping hole inside of them, someone trying to make a point. He starts to drink in front of Jack, earlier and earlier in the day. He picks arguments with him, calls him a coward and a sell-out and a pussy and some nastier things. Accuses Jack, yet again, of trashing the life of everyone he has sex with.

At some point they’re both in the kitchen and Jack has had it - with a loud clatter, he tosses down the colander he’s washing, turns and drags Tony by the front of his shirt to the kitchen island to push him against it. _“Enough,_ ” he spits.

“What are you gonna do.” Tony scoffs in his face. He reeks of whiskey. “Hit me? Choke me? Throw me on the ground? Break my fucking ankle? Go ahead.”

“I’m not going to hit you.”

“You want to.”

“No, _you_ want me to.”

“I thought you liked that about me,” he says, taunting.

“I like the Tony who could stop feeling sorry for himself long enough to get some actual work done.”

“Right, the only time I’m any good to anybody. When I’m _wor-king_.”

“You know what?” Jack drops his shirt and throws his hands up. “Forget it. I can’t talk to you like this.”

“Thank Christ,” Tony snorts, leaving the room.

Toward the end of that four weeks, Tony stops lashing out at him. He’s relieved at first, but soon realizes this is the sign of a deeper depression, that Tony can no longer even muster the energy to externalize his pain onto Jack.

He hardly sees Tony anymore. He hears him in the living room at ridiculous hours, three A.M., four A.M., watching TV. He hears him stagger back to bed as the sun is rising, around the same time Jack is waking up.

One night he comes into Jack’s room. Jack rouses, still half in a dream he was having about surfing.

Tony crawls into bed with Jack and slides their bodies together. He’s so drunk he can’t comport his limbs properly. He rolls onto his back and spreads his legs, tries to pull Jack on top of him.

“Tony, no,” Jack says blearily, realizing what’s happening. “No, you’re… no.”

Tony grinds his hips against Jack, barely seeming to register that he spoke. His eyes are closed.

Jack grabs his wrist. “I can’t do this when you’re like this.”

There’s a burning ache in his chest. Just a month ago they had great sex, connected sex. They looked into each other’s eyes, and Jack felt fully trusted.

“No,” he says again, his voice powerful and firm.

Tony seems to accept this at a conscious level, and stops moving. He rolls onto his side, facing away from Jack, and falls asleep.

Jack lays awake for hours, watching shadows creep steadily along the ceiling.

 

/

 

Tony doesn’t drink the next day, as far as Jack can tell. He comes into the living room in the early afternoon, slinking in shame like a dog. Jack’s heart twinges at the sight of him.

“Sorry,” Tony mutters while pouring a bowl of cereal.

Jack stops typing and looks up. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No, I…”

Tony puts his hands flat on the counter and lets out a sigh that catches in his chest.

“I can’t do this again,” he says. “I don’t even have anything to lose this time.”

“You have me,” Jack says fiercely.

Tony looks at him for the first time. His eyes are bloodshot and his face is puffy with hangover. Even so, Jack can tell he’s lost weight.

“I want to do something for you,” Jack says. “Tomorrow. Get some sleep tonight.”

Tony squints at him. “Do something for me?”

“Yeah. It’s for me, too. And it’s going to hurt like a bitch and you’re gonna scream at me, but I promise, you will feel better afterward. And then we’ll come home and we’ll talk. Okay?”

“Jack, _what?_ You’re talking like an asshole.”

“I am an asshole,” he says, baring his teeth in an humorless smile. “Like I said. Just get some sleep tonight.”

Tony nods slowly. “Fine,” he says.

He brings his bowl of cereal in the living room and sits across from Jack.


	20. 20

The next day dawns appalingly sunny.

In all his time away Jack has forgotten the reality of the oppressive sunshine of Los Angeles, the insistence of it. On a day like today the sky should be roiling with clouds, it should be pouring rain in relentless cold sheets.

Tony gets in the car, stiff and grudging. He looks at Jack out of the corner of his eye a few times as they drive, clearly trying to suss out where they’re going, but Jack keeps his face unreadable and stays silent.

As they start to leave the packed throng of the city and the roads fan out to more residential areas, Jack parks outside at a corner florist that’s displaying flowers out front.

There’s an elderly man sitting in a chair next to the flowers, smoking. He gestures with his cigar. “What we have out here is make your own bouquet,” he says. “Pick whatever and I’ll tie it for you and ring you up.”

Teri liked colorful Asiatic lilies - they grew them in their tiny yard at the first place they lived, when Kim was just a baby with a soft head of fine, fuzzy white-blonde hair. He picks mostly those and adds a few bright carnations. Teri loved all bright things.

He hands off the group to the old man, who begins to wrap them. As he’s doing that, Jack picks out white daisies for Michelle. He remembers Tony and Michelle’s wedding, how there were daisies at every table.

They’re wrapped and Jack pays, requesting an opaque bag.

When he returns to the car, Tony’s face is stony. “What are you doing?”

“Stay with me,” Jack says. “Just ten more minutes.”

They continue to drive. Jack’s hands are tight on the wheel.

When they reach the gates of the cemetery, Tony understands.

“I was supposed to be buried here,” is the first thing he says. It comes out slowly.

“So is Teri,” Jack says softly.

The gates open. He begins to pull up the long, winding road, over the hill, where the actual plots are.

“So is Michelle,” Tony says. His voice is thick. “Jack -”

“You haven’t seen her. You didn’t get to go to her funeral. You didn’t get to say goodbye.”

“I can’t do this,” Tony says. He sounds borderline hysterical. “Fuck you, Jack. You don’t get to - turn the car around.”

He pulls violently at the door handle, but Jack has the childproof lock on.

Jack steps on the brakes. “We’ll leave if you want,” he says. “I just wanted to let you visit her. You’d never come here on your own. Would you? Lay some flowers down. Say hello to her.”

“I don’t need to come here to say hello to her. I’ve been talking to her for the last seven years. Don’t make me look at her grave, all right?”

Jack looks at him. His eyes are shining with tears.

“I…”

He puts a hand on Tony’s shoulder; in the way of a brother, not a lover.

“We’ll go see Teri first. Okay? I haven’t seen her in years. If you feel like you can’t do it, I’ll lay the flowers with Michelle for you, and I’ll tell her you said hello. And then we can go.”

Tony takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“Okay,” he says, surprising Jack. “Okay.”

When they get to Teri’s grave, Jack doesn’t cry. He’s past that now. The heavy feeling in his chest is the only giveaway of his grief, and that’s private to him.

There are flowers there. Wilted, but there. Kim must have left them just before she was whisked away to D.C.

“Hey honey,” he says, choking up slightly. He clears his throat.

Tony is standing a good distance away, just watching him. There are two graves to the left of Teri’s - her father’s and her mother’s, and a headstone for Jack on the right. February 18, 1966 - nothing yet. They had agreed long ago that Jack would be buried in her family’s plot. At the time he mentioned he would like to be with his mother, but he was so on the outs with his father and brother that he couldn’t imagine spending eternity next to them. Now that he knows what he knows about them, the idea is the most abhorrent thing he can think of. He aches for his mother, buried with her monstrous son and husband.

“I know Kim comes to see you a lot, so I don’t have much to tell you. She’s doing well. Their daughter’s a pistol, you’d like her. Uh… I’m still around. Still down here, not with you quite yet. Not for lack of trying.”

He lays the flowers carefully, next to Kim’s dying bouquet.

“I still think about you, every day,” he says softly, and touches her headstone.

Jack turns and walks back to Tony, still holding Michelle’s daisies. Tony grabs them away. His hands are shaking.

“You’re a real asshole for not telling me where we were going,” Tony says. “But you were right that I never would have come if you did.”

“I know you,” Jack says.

“I want to… I want to see her.” Tony’s voice is even, but he seems barely composed. His whole body has begun to tremble, like he’s in danger of breaking apart.

They start walking slowly. Jack leads the way. He called ahead, and he knows where she is.

Their plot is higher up on the large hill that the cemetery is centered around, with the blessing of shade from a weeping willow. The first thing they see is Tony’s grave, desecrated, ripped open, an obscene hole in the ground. Casket gone. Jack wonders how no one has bothered filling it in at some point in the last seven years.

His headstone remains, eerie in its inscription of Tony’s birth in 1973 and the error of his death in 2009. A gaping emptiness that sits next to Michelle’s well-maintained plot.

Tony stands staring at that awful sight for a good half of a minute. Jack can’t blame him.

“Sorry I can’t tell you what your funeral was like,” he says flatly. He was on a Chinese freight barge being brutally tortured while three of his best friends were being laid to rest.

“I asked Chloe,” Tony says. His voice is barely above a whisper. Jack has to strain to hear him over the breeze whipping the willow’s long strings of leaves. “She said it was nice. It was for… uh, for both of us...”

He kneels down in front of Michelle’s grave and lays the flowers there. There are already flowers on her grave, more dead than Kim’s were but no more than a few weeks old. Jack isn’t sure who put them there. Her brother, maybe?

Tony says something. His voice is so weak Jack can’t hear him.

He bends down slightly. “What?”

“She was pregnant,” Tony says, his voice thin and hard, a garrote of words. His hands are pressed hard against the earth. His trembling is urgent and full-body, feverish. “I haven’t told anyone that.”

Jack feels a chill and nausea wash over him. The familiar feeling of empathizing intimately with someone else’s horrible tragedy.

“Tony…” he says. He wants so much to hold him.

Tony begins to sob raggedly. He continues for a while, lulling to a stop a few times only to start up again even harder. He dry heaves several times. When he’s able to regain some composure and turn to Jack, he stares up at him like one would at a rude stranger. A blood vessel has broken in the corner of his right eye.

“Leave me alone,” he croaks. “I’ll find you when I’m ready.”

Jack doesn’t need to be told twice.

 

/

 

He’s sitting in the car fiddling with the radio when Tony appears over the hill. He walks slowly and with a great stiffness, like he’s aged decades in an hour.

Tony gets in the car and stares straight ahead.

Jack doesn’t start the car, instead just looking at him. He can tell he’s going to say something.

“Your funeral was nice,” Tony says hoarsely. “We told everyone you’d been cremated, we got a John Doe’s ashes. We spread them on the beach… that was Kim’s idea...”

He falls silent and presses his hand to his mouth, leaning his elbow on the car door and looking out the window.

Jack starts the car.

 

/

 

That night they sit together and watch TV, a first since they’ve arrived in Los Angeles. Tony is flat of affect. He mumbled something about a headache when he got home and took a few of his leftover Fentanyl. Between being stoned on those and all of the crying he did earlier, he sits like a statue, seemingly spent of emotions and energy, feet up on the coffee table.

Jack gets a call from Chloe halfway through the evening news and takes it in the other room.

“Hey,” he says quietly, closing the door behind him.

“How are you guys holding up? What’s the ADIC having you do? It’s been a nightmare for me since you left. Their protocols are such a mess, I’m trying to rewrite a little bit of the system in my spare time. _Janis_ isn’t happy.”

Chloe’s never been much for hellos.

“We’re fine,” Jack says. “I’m still working from the house, they have me going through the evidence they pulled off Suvarov.”

“Anything good?”

“Just the fact that this has been going on for a lot longer than anybody thought.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “That figures,” she says.

Jack sighs. “I’m not surprised by much anymore.”

“How’s Tony?”

“Uh,” Jack says.

“Not good, I know that.”

“Yeah... “ He retreats a little further into the bedroom, unsure of how well Tony can hear him. “He was drinking a lot.”

“Was?”

“He kind of had a wake-up call last night, and then I took him to see Michelle’s grave today.”

“Jesus, Jack...”

“He needed to see it. He’s been living like a ghost for seven years now.”

“Not everything that’s good for you is good for him.”

“Chloe. I’m aware of that.”

“I’m just saying -”

“It helped him.”

“I believe you, but you can be such a hardass when you’re hurt, Jack.”

He’s surprised. “You think I’m _hurt_?”

“You take every wrong thing Tony does personally. Remember when he helped Saunders? He betrayed everyone at CTU, and we all knew it had nothing to do with us. But you acted like he ran around that day yelling ‘fuck Jack Bauer especially!’ while he was committing treason.”

“I don’t want to have this conversation.”

“You brought it up.”

“I didn’t.”

“You brought up his drinking!”

Jack supposes that he did.

“Fine, I’m the bad guy,” he hisses into the phone.

“He did a lot for you to save your ass, and he didn’t _have_ to do any of it.”

“Please, we all know I could have saved my own ass. He didn’t _have_ to join up with a terrorist and shit on everything any of us ever stood for -”

“I forgive him,” Chloe says, her voice loud and clear. “So don’t bring me into this. We all forgave him, way before you even found us. Bill forgave him. If Michelle were -”

“Don’t do that. You don’t know what Michelle would do. You don’t know how angry she would be.”

“Don’t act like you and Michelle are the same exact person!”

She practically yells it, her voice ringing through the phone.

Jack is silent. He wants to hang up. He even takes the phone away from his ear and hovers his thumb over the end call button. In the end, he doesn’t.

“I’m not,” he says icily. “And I forgave Tony for what he did to save her, _years_ ago.”

“Forgive him again. None of us are saints, Jack.”

A sigh tumbles out of him.

“It hurts more when it’s somebody you’ve been with.” Her voice crackles. Jack wonders if she’s in a car. It would be about six thirty on the East coast, about the time she’d be leaving the FBI. “We all know that. I was married to an alcoholic, remember? I still am, remember?”

“I’m not married to Tony. Christ,” he says, loudly.

“I know you love each other, in your weird way. Otherwise you wouldn’t care so much.”

Jack’s stomach jumps. He goes silent again, pacing around the room.

“You don’t have to say anything to that,” Chloe finally supplies.

“He didn’t even tell me he was alive,” Jack spits. At this point, he’s reaching and he knows it. Desperate for something to be angry about, something he can use to distance himself from Tony’s pain.

“Jack. Please. I’m begging you. Let this all go. Why did you bring him to Michelle, so he could have closure? What’s the point of doing that if you’re just going to hold onto all this stuff yourself? You’ve hurt each other. We’ve all hurt each other. We’re all just people living through terrible situations.”

Jack closes his eyes. Her quiet breathing on the other line soothes him. He hadn’t realized, but his heart has been raging in his chest, pounding violently. Slowly, the beating of it normalizes.

“Yeah. Thanks, Chloe,” he mutters. “I’m gonna miss having you around.”

“Maybe I’ll make it back out there, I really don’t know yet. Listen, I gotta go anyway. Bye.”

She hangs up without giving him the chance to say goodbye back.

Jack leaves the bedroom, sliding his phone back into his pocket. Tony looks up at him. He looks like he’s in serious need of sleep.

“So are you still hung up on me not sending you a postcard from the afterlife?” he says. His voice is very hoarse.

Jack snorts. Always the sarcasm. “Sorry, didn’t think you could hear that.”

“Only a little bit toward the end, when you started screaming. How’s Chloe?”

“She’s fine.”

Tony stretches, languorous and cat-like. Jack feels a quick sharp pang of attraction to him. Even wasted-looking and bleary with exhaustion, he’s still appealing to Jack, if not moreso for it. He remembers a moment of acute attraction to Tony, on a day many years ago when they were in the field together and had just taken out a sniper nest in a flurry of brutal hand-to-hand combat. In the process of breaking someone’s neck, Tony had gotten hit in the mouth and was bleeding obscenely from one of his gums. He spat blood with every few steps. His eyes were wild with adrenaline. Jack had wanted to push him on the ground and fuck him right then and there.

“Want to go to bed?” Jack says, trying to sound as neutral as possible.

Tony’s mouth shuts and he flicks his eyes up and down over Jack warily. When he processes that there’s no sex implicit in the invitation, he yawns. “Yeah. Okay.”

Jack is first to finish his nighttime routine, undress and pull himself under the covers. He hears Tony clattering around in the kitchen for a few minutes until he steps through the doorway, bringing his toothbrush from the bathroom down the hall. He’s already in his boxers.

Jack listens to him brushing his teeth and spitting, watching the ceiling. Tony sighs as he leaves the bathroom and he settles onto the edge of the bed, leaning his elbows on his thighs and bringing his forehead down to touch his clasped hands.

“What’s up?” Jack murmurs.

“Just tired.”

“So let’s go to sleep.”

Tony nods.

“Are you gonna come in with me next Monday?”

Tony turns to look at him. “I have a choice?”

Jack shrugs. “I could cover for you, if you need a little longer.”

“No. No, I’ll go in. I think… Uh. Today helped. I almost didn’t want to say that, but, it’s the truth.”

“I just wanted to shock you out of the spiral you were in. I didn’t want to hurt you, Tony.”

Tony lets out a soft little laugh. “Feel like you’ve been saying that a lot lately.”

“It’s true.”

Tony looks at him for a long moment. In the darkness, Jack can’t see his eyes.

“You don’t think you’ve been trying to punish me for what I did?” Tony asks him. “On some level.”

Jack cracks his knuckles out of habit. “Maybe,” he admits. “Without meaning to. Maybe, yeah. I guess I have. Tony, I never wanted to have any reason to distrust you.”

“And I’ve never wanted to give you one. Sometimes the ends justify the means. Sometimes I was doing what I had to do.”

“Or what you wanted to do.”

“When you’re in the middle of it, it sometimes doesn’t feel like there’s a difference.”

This strikes Jack. He’s always at least felt the difference, even when he’s consciously decided to disregard it.

“Do you trust me right now?” Tony says quietly.

He moves closer to Jack on the bed, settling into the space next to him, and looks up at him in that solicitous way of his. Jack again wants to have sex with him, wants to roll him over and have him right here. It’s been over a month since they’ve been together. The ache to touch Tony is a constant low buzz in his body.

“Yeah,” he says. “Of course.”

“Then what’s the problem, Jack?” he murmurs, sliding under the covers and turning his back to him.

Jack reaches out and slides his hand over Tony’s side. Tony shifts under his touch, drawing away from him.

“Just… gimme a little more time, all right?” he says.

“Sometimes I feel like that’s the best way I know how to talk to you,” Jack says.

Tony laughs. “What’s fifteen years good for, huh?” he says, voice clouded with sleep.

Jack slides down so his head is resting against his pillow.


	21. 21

The first day they’re due to come in is the following Monday, and in the days leading up to it Tony slowly warms back up to him. He’s still like a skittish cat, darting in and out of rooms, but he pours all the liquor and beer down the sink and seems to be making an effort to wake up at a normal hour.

Jack doesn’t press the sex issue. He thinks that it even might be better this way, that having a break might be good for both of them. He knows that they were only fucking as much as they were and as rough as they were for stress relief, so they didn’t each jump out of their skin while trying to avoid capture. No reason for that when they're safe.

They sleep in the same bed at night again. Usually they wake up on separate sides, but touching gently, and one morning Jack wakes to find himself pressed up against Tony. Jack feels free to pull him a little closer, move his hands over him. Tony sleepily responds to his touch. He looks younger than his years when he’s asleep, his hand resting palm-up on the pillow next to his face, wearing a worn blue cotton t-shirt.

Jack finds the weight of him comforting. He presses a kiss between Tony's shoulder blades and Tony shifts backward slightly, moving more into his arms. Jack encircles him protectively.

"You up?" he murmurs.

"No," Tony says. His voice is thick with sleep.

Jack strokes his hair. He really is growing it out.

He lays back down, hand resting on Tony's waist. He feels him breathe in, out. Jack falls back asleep.

 

/

 

“Jack Bauer. Jack fucking Bauer!”

That’s the first thing Thompson says to him. His face is lit up, and he extends Jack an eager handshake.

“Good to finally meet you,” Jack says, keeping his voice cool.

“Tony, Tony,” Thompson says, and shakes his hand as well. “I used to contract out Rick Rosen, I’ve heard good things. Glad to have you guys here.”

He seems bound and determined to ignore the many assorted crimes both of them have committed, and Jack is more than willing to play along. He’s not one to admit it, but he’s never liked being the fugitive. Never liked walking into a room only to be met by wary glances. The older he gets, the worse it feels. He’s way past the age for the attention to even be flattering. Now it just feels like being an old mad dog, waiting for the day somebody takes you out behind the shed.

They stride down a hallway together, Thompson out in front, Jack on his heels, Tony trailing behind.

“Here’s where I have you guys, for now,” Thompson says, pushing open a door at the end of the hallway and ushering them inside.

It’s a small office, with two desks that face each other, but a great view out the window of a bustling L.A. intersection and a palm tree right outside.

“Good?”

“Great,” Jack says.

“Fantastic. I’ll have one of my guys in to discuss what you’ve collected for us this past month, and get you access to our servers. I’ll be back!” he calls as he disappears down the hall.

“Is that a threat?” Tony says under his breath.

Jack sits down at the desk that faces the window. “He could be treating us a lot worse.”

“Yeah, maybe I’d prefer that,” Tony says. “Piss on my face, not on my back, you know…”

“Never heard that.”

“People say that in Chicago.”

“No, they don’t.”

Tony laughs a long and genuine laugh. It’s a welcome sight. He’s started to gain back the weight he lost. The circles under his eyes remain, but something in him has lightened.

 

/

 

By the time they get home, the sun is almost down, spilling its last bit of gold light across everyone’s yards. Laughter rings through the neighborhood; a group of kids are having one last game of hockey in the street before they have to go in for dinner.

Jack stands on their front steps, fumbling with his keys. He has some nerve damage in his left hand. Most days it’s just a dull pain, but once in a while it flares up enough to make a small task difficult.

Tony silently takes the keys from him.

“Thanks,” Jack mutters.

Tony bumps hips with him. Jack, keeping an eye out behind him for anyone who might be watching, slides his hand over Tony’s waist and kisses him on the cheekbone.

Tony gets the door open and, sliding the keys into his pocket, turns his face to Jack so they can really kiss. Jack pulls his blazer off and tosses it aside as they stumble into the living room together, then collapses onto the couch, dragging Tony with him.

Tony smooths his fingers through Jack’s hair, kissing him more gently than usual.

“You’re okay?” Jack says, his voice rumbling in his chest.

“Yeah,” Tony says. Jack strokes his face and Tony’s eyes shut.

He starts to move his hips against Jack and Jack lets out a gasp, shifting around in his seat.

“I have to admit, I thought today would be worse,” Tony says. “I mean, it wasn’t great, but…”

“Listen, we can do this,” Jack says. “We can. Just take it all one day at a time.”

Tony nods and leans in for another kiss. They haven’t kissed in so long that it’s awkward and messy. They reposition their heads often. Tony sits up taller in his lap so he can lean down more, and sucks Jack’s upper lip for a while. The longer they kiss, the more their hands spread out over each other, searching for places to touch.

Jack undoes Tony’s shirt, button by button, until a bare strip of chest and stomach are showing. His own shirt is clenched in Tony’s fist. Tony has begun to rock his hips harder and harder. They’re both hard, but Jack works to keep his erection down. He wants to draw this out as long as possible.

“Let’s take a shower,” Jack murmurs.

Tony says nothing, keeps kissing him, goes ‘ _mmm_ ’.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Tony sighs. He’s still slowly rocking his hips. He has a glassy, pliable look that Jack is very familiar with.

He stands up and pulls Tony down the hallway and into the bathroom. They undress each other in soft white light of the bathroom. They kiss again. Jack pushes Tony’s naked body against the vanity cabinet, his hands cupping his face. Their cocks rub against each other in a satisfying way, and Tony lets out a small moan. Jack withdraws again, not wanting to get anywhere near coming yet.

“Shower,” he says, and walks over to start the tap. Tony follows him. He runs a hand over Jack’s back as he’s bent over, waiting for the water to warm up. Jack tenses, knowing how scarred his back is. But Tony’s hand moves easily over the scars, with no hesitation at all. No disgust.

“I lied to you,” Jack blurts out.

Tony’s hand stills. “About what?”

“Lied is the wrong word. When you implied… When we were on the ship and you were talking about, you know. Around the time when I was doing heroin, and you asked if I thought about you in that way, even though things had been over between us for a while.”

Tony is quiet.

“I did still think of you that way. I was just fighting this battle every day, completely alone, and I saw you all the time. It was hard not to. But I had no conscious intention of acting on that. I’m sorry that I put you in an uncomfortable position just because I was high. You have my word that I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Jack… that’s not a big deal. And I knew that.”

“It’s just that I’ve been punishing you for not telling me the whole truth, but I’ve kept you in the dark about certain things over the years.”

He pushes the button on the spout and stands up with difficulty. His back is stiff. Water pours over them.

Tony leans against the shower wall, eyelashes glistening with caught droplets.

“What you said about taking things one day at a time, I’m on board with that,” Tony says. “I’m tired of being angry, all right?”

Jack leans in and kisses him again. It astounds him how the warmth of the two of them hasn’t run out or faded over these many years. The brush of Tony’s lips on his is still the same thrilling, confusing experience as it was the very first time. He is still surprised to find a familiar cock and balls between Tony’s legs, instead of the remote and exotic architecture of a vagina - still fascinated by the hair on his chest and the thickness of his body. Their chemistry is still potent. They’re always being drawn to each other, slowly and inexorably, like ivy up a fence.

Jack presses his hand to Tony’s throat and Tony lets out a soft encouraging noise. “Harder, harder.”

“I’m not doing that,” Jack says, and he gets on his knees. Tony sighs.

“I’ll slap you if you want,” he amends. “I can bite you. But I won’t choke you.”

He takes Tony’s cock into his mouth and at the same time soaps up his fingers and begins to drag them over Tony’s asshole. Tony gives a full-body stagger, grabbing onto Jack’s shoulder and leaning on him like a puppet with his strings cut.

Jack sucks him off deliberately, not taking him very deep but establishing a solid rhythm that Tony stiffens fast in response to.

Tony drags his nails up Jack’s back before he comes. When he does come Jack swallows most of it by accident. The rest is spat in a sad little dribble and carried away down the drain. Tony is breathing hard and his eyelids are heavy. Jack continues to run his soapy fingers over Tony, pushing slightly inside of him.

“Is there a reason you…” Tony says, his voice low from his orgasm.

Jack stands up and grins, then turns Tony around forcefully.

“Hands against the wall,” he says, and starts rinsing the soap away with the showerhead, while kissing the nape of Tony's neck.

Then he returns to his knees and licks down Tony’s lower back, finally reaching his asshole, and starts to tease it with his tongue.

“Jesus,” Tony hisses.

“Good?”

“I -” Jack feels Tony’s muscles tighten. “Yeah, good, but -”

He continues to lick him and Tony lets out a little moan.

“Jack…”

Jack begins to work a finger into him, continuing to flick the rim of him with his tongue.

“How much do you like being fucked?” Jack says. He’s almost never surprised by the harsh sound of his own voice anymore, but he’s shocked by how aggressively those words came out of him.

Tony lets out a broken, gagging noise, like he wants to moan and beg but is trying to keep himself together. Jack’s cock swells, and he has to rest his forehead against Tony’s lower back and breathe deeply.

“Tell me how much,” he eggs him on, “I wanna know…”

“Fuck,” Tony sighs.

Jack abandons the licking in favor of dirty talk and slides another finger into him. “Okay?” It’s a tough fit without lube, especially since Jack hasn’t fucked him in so long.

Tony nods.

“Tell me,” Jack says, his voice hard. “Tell me.”

He works his fingers against Tony’s prostate. Tony gasps and Jack hears his fingernails scraping against the tile of the shower.

With his free hand he grabs Tony around the thigh, digging his fingertips into the sensitive skin, brushing his spent cock with his thumb.

“I need it,” Tony says, his voice cracking. His head is bowed.

“You need to get fucked? You need me?”

“Yeah. Oh, _God._ Yeah,” he says, hiccuping on the last part. Jack strokes his back and stands up, goes to the sink and brushes his teeth, then rinses with mouthwash.

He returns to the shower and Tony hesitantly kisses him, then more eagerly. Jack is rock hard between their stomachs, and has to push Tony’s fingers away from his cock. He takes Tony’s hand and leads him into the bedroom, pulling him onto the bed. Their halfway full bottle of lube stands waiting on the bedside table.

Their bodies settle together easily. Tony stretches out beneath him and Jack undertakes the business of fingering him.

The fragile intimacy that Jack had been sorely missing has returned to them. Its presence startles Jack, like a bird has lighted on his outstretched hand. He wants to fill Tony in all the ways he can.

Tony makes soft noises in response to the fingering and cups Jack's jaw with his hand. They make long, gazing eye contact. Jack fingers him in long easy strokes, slowly spreading him out.

Tony murmurs for Jack to come inside of him, his voice low, soft and sibilant on _inside_. Jack promises him that he will, he will.

It’s dusk outside now. A mourning dove coos from somewhere outside the window, once and then twice. Beneath that long, plaintive noise is the quiet sound of their bodies shifting against each other, the rumble of Jack’s breath in his chest as he pushes himself inside of Tony, and Tony’s respondent broken exhale.

“No good?” Jack says.

“No, it’s good,” Tony says. He slides his hand up Jack’s thigh, going against the grain of his short blonde leg hair. He makes another little noise of pain but arches his back and spreads his legs wider. “Don’t stop. I’ll loosen up, don’t stop…”

Jack starts to thrust into and out of him. Tony’s tension seems to ease and he grabs Jack around the ribcage, bracing himself against him. His eyelashes flutter and he moans. A jolt goes through Jack at the sound. He’s forgotten how much he likes to hear it.

Jack digs his fingernails into his palm to stave off his orgasm. The tight heat of Tony is bringing it on too fast. He thrusts harder; Tony squeezes his legs against Jack’s sides. He moves like he wants to roll over, wants Jack to fuck him doggy style, but Jack preempts this by leaning down to kiss him, moving his hands over Tony’s jaw. Tony moans against his lips and wraps each of his hands around Jack’s wrists.

“Harder,” he says.

Jack obliges. He leans down to kiss him. Their mouths meet sloppily. The bed creaks as Jack thrusts into him, rougher and faster. Tony moves his hands to Jack’s waist and snakes them over his lower back, and rakes his nails up Jack.

Jack gasps with the satisfying pain of it. His mouth floods with the taste of salt. He hisses _fucker_ , then tells him to do it again and harder. Jack thrusts into him with more violence, and Tony claws at him with more violence, the muscles in his arms flexed and rigid. Jack can feel Tony’s nails break his skin and he rockets to the edge of coming. He works to even his breathing.

Jack shifts Tony upward on the bed and grabs his ass. Tony sighs with pleasure, throwing his head back, pushing against the pillows. They kiss again, deep and with tongue. Tony’s teeth scrape Jack’s lip and the muscles inside him clench around Jack’s cock, making Jack groan.

“Fuck,” Tony gasps, sounding completely out of his mind with need. He grabs Jack’s thighs in an effort to pull him deeper inside.

In the haze of sex Jack registers his body tiring. He leans down on his elbows, face pressed to Tony’s chest, continuing to thrust into him. Tony runs his fingers through Jack’s hair.

The mourning dove coos again. Jack squeezes his eyes shut. He wants to do this for as long as possible, but he also wants to come, he wants to spend himself and lie there holding Tony.

“I’m gonna come,” he says. His voice is thick with arousal.

“Yeah, Jack, oh God, yeah…”

He starts to suck at a spot above Tony’s clavicle. Tony moans again and shifts under him. Jack is in as deep as he can go, but they both want him to be deeper.

In the moment it feels like they’re a part of each other, embedded in one another. Jack wants to absorb Tony, to smother him, to bury his entire self into Tony.

He feels himself pass the point where he can no longer prevent it and comes inside of him. Tony says his name several times, reverently.

Jack doesn’t pull out of him, but he does slide up the bed so they can kiss. They fall sideways, and lean against each other. He feels his cock soften inside of Tony, Semen leaks out and dribbles over both of their thighs.

Tony kisses him, first deep on his mouth and then over his jaw, over his neck, over his shoulders. He finally rests his forehead against Jack’s throat. Jack strokes the back of his head, and then moves his hand down to rub his back in small circles.

“Good?” he asks.

“Good,” Tony responds with a shuddering sigh.

“Enough, or you want more?”

Tony gives a soft laugh. “I’m good for now. How old are you again?”

“Not _that_ old…”

There’s a moment of quiet where Jack continues to rub his back.

“Do you want to talk about what's been going on with us?” he says.

“Oh, Jack…” Tony sighs, and presses his warm body even closer to Jack’s. He feels a twitch in his spent cock and pointedly ignores it. “Why do you always want to do this?”

Jack runs his hand over Tony’s shoulder “Just checking in.”

“We’re both just trying to move on… maybe it’s impossible to. For now, I’m okay being here. I’m okay being here with you. There’s something Michelle said to me when we first got back together… she said, ‘I’m glad Jack brought you back, I’m glad he took care of you. Me and him are the only people who know how.’”

Jack makes a noise of assent. It’s a soft hum in his chest.

“I wasn’t doing too well alone in Alaska.”

“I wasn’t doing too well alone in New York,” Jack responds. “Clearly.”

“I could have told you to stay away from that shit, that day. You’d never have listened, but... You and Michelle, I swear…”

Tony trails off. His voice is sad, but peaceful.

This time Jack is the one to press tighter. He’s still inside of Tony; it feels better than he figured it might. Tony isn’t making any moves to leave and go clean up. If anything, he seems content and sleepy.

“So… yeah, we don’t have to talk,” he murmurs.

Jack is getting sleepy, too. It’s fully dark out now. The moon and a streetlight provide a gentle glow.

“You know, you took care of _me_ that day,” he whispers.

Tony doesn’t answer. Jack guesses he might already be asleep. He starts to drift off, and feels Tony stroke his arm, then take his hand.


	22. Epilogue

_FIVE MONTHS LATER_

 

Jack raises his mug of coffee to his lips, his ears alert for the sound of a running motor.

It’s not quite light out. The sun is just peeking over the horizon.

Ever since they subscribed to the Los Angeles Times, the guy who brings the paper by has been throwing it into a bush in their front yard, completely missing their sidewalk and stoop. The same bush, every single time.

Today Jack woke at 4 and couldn’t get back to sleep, so after a half hour of listening to Tony’s breathing and light snoring, he went to go wait for the paperboy.

He finally pulls up. He doesn’t see Jack at first, rummaging around in the bag on his passenger seat.

He looks up and Jack locks eyes with him.

The guy gives a sheepish smile and throws the paper. It sails in a perfect arc and lands at Jack’s feet.

“Nice arm,” he calls.

The guy gives him an embarrassed thumbs-up and drives on.

Jack picks it up and goes back into the house. Tony’s at the Keurig.

“Did I wake you?” Jack says.

“Yeah, but don’t worry about it,” Tony says. “Coffee?”

“I’ll have a cup.”

“What were you doing out there?”

“The paper guy keeps throwing the paper in our bush.”

Tony starts laughing. “So you what... broke his thumbs?”

“I just looked at him,” Jack mumbles, opening up the paper.

“Jesus, gramps.”

Jack rolls his eyes. “Well, he got it right today.”

Tony hands him his coffee while clearly holding back a smile.

“Are you coming in today?” Jack says.

“Hand me the sports section. Do I need to?”

“Since when do you follow L.A. sports? And only if you feel like it. I’m just going in for a few hours.”

“I don’t, I like one of the columnists, he’s a Chicago transplant. Uh, maybe just to get out of the house.”

“Aren’t we going to the farmer’s market today? We were going to meet Kim.”

Tony sighs. “Do you need me for that? I feel like when I’m out with you guys, it looks weird.”

“How does it look weird?”

“I don’t know, Jack...”

“You know, Teri really likes you,” Jack says as he skims the news section.

Tony looks up. “Really?”

“Yeah, you’re like her fun uncle. I mean, Stephen doesn’t have any siblings. You know that, right?”  
Tony puts his hands up. “All right. I’ll come. Don’t guilt me.”

“I’m not guilting you,” Jack mutters, even though he is. Now he’s the one trying not to smile.

“Either way. I’m getting in the shower,” Tony says, finishing up his coffee.

“Okay. Be ready in a half hour.”

“Roger,” Tony says as he disappears down the hallway.

After a minute or two, Jack can hear him humming over the running water.

Now he lets the smile come.


End file.
